It’s been a long time since I was in Thailand. Ten years, as a matter of fact, but the taste of Bangkok has stayed with me all this time. Basil, ginger, nam pla, garlic. Combining the right ingredients seems simple enough. But cooks in Thailand, whether in a fancy restaurant or at a night market, expertly create complex flavor blends that I’ve tried to recreate here, in my own kitchen, with little success.

I’ve dined in countless Thai restaurants, searching for those perfect flavor combinations, and never found them. Until now. Chef Tony Chulacharit at Eugene’s Sweet Basil does it right. As well he should. Chulacharit learned to cook at the knee of his grandmother in Bangkok. “In Thailand,” he says, “we cook to live and live to cook.”

There are reminders of Chulacharit’s home everywhere you look inside Sweet Basil. There’s a mural of Bangkok’s famous floating market and a wooden boat hanging from the ceiling. Yet, located just up from Eugene classics Ambrosia and Café Zenon, and nestled between Mezza Luna Pizzeria and Diablo’s on Pearl Street’s restaurant row, Sweet Basil knows exactly where it is.

“Eugene is such a nice, unique town,” says Max Stabin, co-owner of Sweet Basil. “I walked downtown and thought, ‘We need to be here.’” Of course, when the Eugene location opened in 2001, Sweet Basil was already an established name, with three Portland restaurants, known for upscale yet traditional Thai cuisine. Stabin’s business partner, Kuraya Chulacharit, is Tony Chulacharit’s aunt. She is also the founder of Kuraya’s Thai in Springfield and of Oregon’s first Thai restaurant, in Myrtle Creek. Called Kuraya’s, that restaurant is now closed.

Together, Tony and his aunt created the menu for Eugene’s Sweet Basil. Chef Chulacharit has a knack for taking traditional Thai flavors and cooking techniques and combining them with Northwest ingredients . . . with stunning results. For instance, asparagus is a rarity in Thai cooking, but Chulacharit has created a dish called Bouquet of Flowers. It’s a masterpiece, with asparagus spears wrapped in a bell pepper and lying across the plate to create bouquet stems. The dish includes shrimp and shiitake mushrooms, and all of it is topped with a real flower. “We make a lot of dishes that customers will see pass by the table,” he says. “They might not know what it is, but they’ll order whatever that person is having.”

If you prefer more traditional Thai cuisine, Chulacharit takes locally grown produce and meats and makes a dish that tastes completely authentic. The house curry, a red curry whose heat is tempered with a peanut sauce, is one example. The stir-fried dishes are also traditional, yet wonderful with local ingredients. If you are timid about traditional Thai because it is often hot, not to worry. “Not all Thai food is hot,” says Stabin. “You can have it mild or you can have it wild.”

The curries and the stir-fries come with a beautiful side dish of traditional white and black jasmine rice, in the shape of a star. For dessert, try one of Chulacharit’s homemade ice creams. Flavors include coconut, mango, and green tea.

I hope it’s not 10 more years before I make it back to Thailand. But if it is, at least I know where to find the flavors of that beautiful country right here in Eugene.

Sweet Basil Thai
941 Pearl Street; Eugene
541/284-2944
sweetbasileug.com

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Meet the Vintner
North by Northwest
At Territorial, winemaking is personal
By Boris Wiedenfeld

Fourth-generation Oregonian Alan Mitchell started Territorial Vineyards & Wine Co. in 2001, together with his wife, April, and Jeff and Victoria Wilson-Charles, but that was by no means his start in the wine business. At age 47, Mitchell has been working in vineyards for more than 20 years. Territorial uses almost entirely estate-grown fruit for its wines, harvested from three vineyards: Alan and April’s own Bellpine Vineyards, located west of Junction City; the Wilson-Charles’ Equinox Vineyards, near Veneta; and Stephen and Nikki Hagen’s Toad Hall Vineyard, also near Junction City. Mitchell manages all three of the vineyards; he has total control over the final product, as well as growing techniques. All of the vineyards are farmed according to LIVE (Low Input Viticulture and Enology) guidelines, and are certified sustainable by LIVE.

In addition to a pinot gris, riesling, and rosé, Territorial bottles up to three different pinot noirs. There is always the “regular” pinot, which retails for less than $20 a bottle and is one of the more popular pours in local eateries. In good years, Territorial also produces Stone’s Throw pinot noir, which is a selection of the best barrels of the vintage. And in exceptional years, they release the big dog: Capital T—the best of the best.

Mitchell plans to maintain Territorial’s production near its current level of 4,000 to 5,000 cases. “At that level we can still know every barrel and every lot intimately,” Mitchell says. “As quantity increases to the point where the winemaker is not personally doing all of the winemaking, the quality will necessarily go down.”

Mitchell’s roots in Eugene go deep. His great-grandfather on his father’s side, Henry Mitchell, had a car dealership, built the Miner building and the Armory, and lived on Villard Street, across from his boyhood pal Mahlon Sweet (namesake of Eugene’s airport). And his maternal grandfather, Harold Lounsbury, was a pillar of the community—“as an undertaker,” Mitchell jokes, “he was the last guy to let you down!”

When it was time to build a winery and tasting room, Mitchell drew on this deep-seated sense of community once again. Rather than build a traditional winery out on the vineyard (he has 70 acres of land to play with), Mitchell and his partners decided to build an urban winery and tasting room right in Eugene’s funky Whiteaker neighborhood. They restored and transformed a 12,000-square-foot coffee warehouse into a state-of-the-art winery and tasting room, which is now also renowned for modern art exhibits (changing monthly) as well as live jazz, poetry, and other performances on Thursday nights.

“It’s a real, integral part of our family life,” Mitchell says of the tasting room. “There’s some kind of deeper thing that happens there.”

Mitchell explains that he sees a solid connection from grape arbor to aging barrel to table service: “Everything we do around here is connected in terms of who we are.”

Territorial Vineyards & Wine Company
541/684-9463
907 W 3rd Ave., Eugene

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