When a frequent customer walks through her restaurant’s door, Rachawan Tantharatn almost always knows exactly what to tell her cooks to prepare. In five to 10 minutes, the Thai cook in the kitchen prepares a dish ranging from October’s most popular, Pad Thai, to the Egg Noodle Soup. She said this relationship with her customers is her favorite part of her job.

Tantharatn, owner of Basil Thai at 701 South Gregory Suite B, has worked in the Thai restaurant business for 12 years. In 2000, she opened Basil Thai on Green Street.

When limited parking on a main street became an issue for some of her customers, she expanded to the eatery’s second location in Urbana in 2004 and has been there since. In 2008, she sold her first location to another local Thai restaurant.

For Basil Thai customers who enjoy peanut sauce, Tantharatn recommends the popular Peanut Sauce Lover dish. The dish consists of chicken, beef, pork, or tofu stir-fried with onion, bell peppers, carrots and cashews. It is then blanketed in warm peanut sauce and served with steamed jasmine rice.

Tantharatn said her experience with helping her grandmother cook Thai food and personally knowing a Thai cook were both essential to helping her open a Thai restaurant. To the owner, the heart of a Thai eatery is the cooks behind the food.

“My cousin proved she is an authentic Thai cook,” Tantharatn said. “I only had to teach her our recipes. She knows how to use the wok too.”

Tantharatn does not use any other cooking medium other than a wok.

According to Tantharatn, real Thai requires a substantial amount of time. Dishes doused with sauces and curry can take hours to prepare. 

Although Tantharatn said she learned many tricks to cooking authentic Thai from her grandmother, she continues learning from cooking. Today, she still finds new appetizers and desserts and then studies how to make them. 

For customers who are new to Thai cuisine, she refers them to the Typical Thai Rice Dishes or Thai Spicy Curry, which cannot be prepared at less than medium spicy. 

However, for other options on the menu, customers can choose how spicy they want their dish to be.

The eatery is most busy in the late afternoon when there are students, professors, couples and large groups sitting at small tables in the front and the long seats in the far end.

As for the future of Basil Thai, Tantharatn said she hopes to open a second location.

“I would need to have another cook from Thailand,” Thantharatn said, “but I want to expand.”

Lyanne can be reached at [email protected].

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Tantharatn sold her first location to Bangkok Thai. It also stated that there were no Thai eateries on campus, when Y Thai Eatery existed. The Daily Illini regrets these errors.