Enlightened goodness

Namaste on the other hand doesn't make a big deal about being chill. It just is.

Maybe it's its smallish space on Tudor Road near Lake Otis Boulevard. Or the warm shade of gold the walls are painted. Or the prayer flags and twinkling holiday lights hanging near the front door.

Whatever it is exactly owner Tsering Lama also immediately puts you at ease with her polite service and family attitude. She exemplifies the meaning of the restaurant's name, an enlightened greeting of respect.

Peaceful plates: Ground yourself by starting with the earthy Tomato Shorba soup ($3.95) then transition to the Chicken Makhani entree ($11.99). With its buttery tomato sauce goodness, you'll wonder where the rest of it went.

How about a side of R&R with your BLT or IPA? No TV, please.

If "rest" is key to your restaurant selection, a relaxing atmosphere is your first of order of business. Think more bliss, fewer loud birthday sing-alongs.

Try these calm locations for a dining experience to soothe stomach and soul.

Lush greens

Paradise in Spenard may inspire other images in some minds, but there's a piece of Eden inside Organic Oasis. And it's wearing a lot of leaves.

Trays of tall wheat grass greet customers inside the entryway. Strips of green neon run the length of the counter wall, illuminating the bar seating perfect for one or more. Large clusters of plants scattered around casual wood tables give the inside air a boost of freshness. You'll almost feel guilty eating a bowl of fresh greens surrounded by so many fresh greens.

One table in particular exudes the essence of easy eating. Hang a hard left as you enter the seating area for a table situated next to a small water pond. Plants and rocks mingle as a copper fish circulates a bubbling stream. You'll be mesmerized by its meditative pulse -- if you aren't already hooked on the soft harmonies of a solo guitarist serenading you from the spot's stage some evenings.

Peaceful plates: Any menu item that comes with Oasis' standard salad will calm your insides with an eccletic mix of lettuces and sunflower seeds. Among the house dressings, the Yam Vinaigrette and Tarragon Spirulina are potent toppers. An Alaskan Halibut Wrap ($13.95) will leave you stuffed and sleepy, and the Garlic Shrimp and Angel Hair Pasta ( $14.95) is great for abating your hunger -- unless you're planning on planting a good-night kiss later.

Someone asked me recently where he should go for lunch downtown. He had recently taken a job in a downtown office building and was having trouble finding decent lunch food -- just a good sandwich, even -- that wouldn't cost him an arm and a leg.
I felt his pain. In most downtown restaurants, gratuity alone will set you back almost as much as a Midtown meal will. I'm all for splurging every now and then, but if I worked downtown, no doubt I'd be brown-bagging it four days out of five.
So it was a bummer for downtown folks (but a boon for Midtowners) when Sweet Basil Cafe owners Tanya and Simon Newall moved out of their cramped, high-rent E Street spot and into their own roomier Northern Lights Boulevard location. Tanya Newall says it's still "a work in progress," but they've made significant changes to the space -- remodeling, painting, taking down the bison marquee -- since it belonged to Alaska Game and Gourmet.
The lunch hour is nearly always bustling, seats filled with happy, chatty customers downing lettuce wraps and pastas on their midday break. The staff isn't always so happy or chatty; around noon, anyway, they often seem rushed and harried and wishful of at least one more hand on deck.
Several weeks ago, I picked up a friend for lunch, and we snagged one of the center tables. She ordered the roasted tomato pasta ($7) -- the Alaska Pasta Co. provides the cafe with a variety of fresh pastas to choose from, and she chose the sweet basil variety. All pastas come with Sweet Basil's signature bread, a chewy, herbalicious carbohydrate of love. The pasta was yummy too: All of them come with fresh cheese, in this case parmesan, which complemented the sauce's Mediterranean flavor.
By virtue of its name, I ordered the Damn Good sandwich ($7.50). Sandwiches are served with the salad of the day, which on this day was a spiral pasta salad with a light, mayonnaise-y wasabi dressing. That was it: just pasta and wasabi mayo.
It wasn't the best pasta salad I've ever had, but it wasn't bad, either, and I have to give it points for creativity.
The sandwich, with its layers of warm roast beef, onions, tomato, avocado, lettuce and cheddar cheese, was good. I don't know if it warrants the minor swear word, although it was certainly darn good, especially due to the sweet basil bread it came on.
Just because it sounded different, we took a giant ginger pecan cookie ($1.50) with us on the way out. It was still a little bit soft, and the ginger level was perfect: enough to flavor it, not enough to overwhelm it. I made a mental note to revisit the dessert case.
A few weeks later, I met another friend there for a Friday lunch. We sat at the wall-facing counter at first, but we grabbed a table when one opened up. I ordered the fresh fish taco ($7.50), and she ordered the Piper Club ($7.50), both of which come with the salad of the day. I spied on other customers' plates and saw that the salad was wasabi pasta again, so I asked if I could substitute the soup of the day, cream of cauliflower. The server said sure, that would be fine. My friend did the same with a cup of clam chowder.
Our soups came out first. They appeared to be made out of the same base, which was thin and slightly mealy. Neither had much flavor -- excusable with a soup made from cauliflower, maybe, but not a clam chowder. Both needed a bigger dose of cream.
We were surprised to see our entrees come out with the wasabi pasta on the side ... maybe they forgot and put it on our plates anyway? This friend, too, remarked on the salad's minimalism: No peas? No onions? Just pasta and dressing? But I maintained that at least it was unique.
Our sandwiches were tasty but not very easy to eat. The Piper Club was piled high with turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado and cheddar, but it was assembled poorly -- everything was concentrated in the middle -- and the thinly sliced sourdough bread (which wasn't very sour; it tasted like basic white bread) didn't hold up.
The fish taco consisted of baked whitefish, roasted peppers, roasted onions, jack cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh greens and a sweet-and-spicy sauce, folded into a flour tortilla. The tortilla was burrito-sized and had been browned, making it too large and crispy to handle with anything but a knife and fork. There has to be a law somewhere that says you can't call something a taco if it has to be eaten with a knife and fork.
At the register, we added two raspberry truffles ($1 each) to our bill (which seemed high -- I realized later that we had been charged $3, the full price, for each cup of soup, even though we were told that we could substitute soup for salad). The cashier didn't bother wrapping the truffles; he figured we would eat them right away (which, OK, was exactly right). Since they tasted the way truffles are supposed to taste, we walked away happy.
I figured I should try at least one of Sweet Basil's dinners to go, since they stay open a few hours after their kitchen closes for that specific reason. Newall recommended the eggplant lasagna ($10), though there were other choices such as mac and cheese, lamb kebabs and wild mushroom and chicken crepes. Dinner comes with a small green salad and, usually, a roll, although if mini loaves of sweet basil bread remain toward the end of the evening, they'll toss one of those in instead.
Supposedly, these are single-serving dinners. I found the lasagna too big for one person but not quite big enough for two people with average appetites.
I also found that the dish was misnamed. Lasagna requires lasagna noodles, which this dish didn't contain; rather, it was a roasted vegetable casserole of eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, yellow squash, garlic, tomato, tomato-based sauce and goat cheese. It had an incredibly rich flavor for a vegetarian dish, although the eggplant was slightly bitter.
These complaints are minor ones, though. This place has it going on: nutritious, wholesome food; a great location; competitive prices.
As long as those factors remain in place during the "work in progress," Sweet Basil can only get sweeter.