Pam Slotsema

“Yesterday I went to Ahalanui Beach Park. Locals simply call it the Hot Pond. It’s a man-made lava pool right next to the ocean. What’s special about it is that the water temperature is around 91-95 F. There are many small fish in it and swimming here is like swimming in a spa, just better because you can see the ocean and palm trees and be outside. The water is volcanically heated from below. It’s a mixture of ocean water and spring water, so it’s not as salty as the ocean. I had my mask and snorkel with me and it was awesome to snorkel in this pool. The water is very clear and the fish are so tame they are not scared of humans at all. It’s not a refreshing swim, but this experience can only be enjoyed on Hawaii’s Big Island (since it’s the only one with active volcanoes).”

Taken from http://www.to-hawaii.com/forums/Thread-Ahalanui-Beach-Park-Hot-Pond

From Mlive…

Thai Basil Cuisine, located in a new strip mall on busy Alpine Avenue NW, successfully overcomes being surrounded by big-box chains by presenting striking decor and fresh cooking.

A pair of Thai dolls in traditional attire and waitresses wearing Thai silk dresses are the only nods to Thai culture.

Owners Meng and Kia Song opened the pleasant, upscale space with picturesque windows and a towering slate fireplace about two months ago. For five years, the couple owned and operated Indo-China restaurant in Bellaire, and before that, they trained at family-owned restaurants in the Traverse City area.

Press Photo/Lori Niedenfuer CoolTofu island: The dish features deep-fried tofu with gang curry sauce.

IF YOU GO

Thai Basil Cuisine

Where: 4022 Alpine Ave. NW, Comstock Park

Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Friday, 4-10 p.m. Saturday

When we dined: 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3

Wait to be seated: Five minutes

Wait for food to arrive: 12 minutes for two appetizers

Dress code: As you like

Ambience: Great decor and atmosphere: Towering slate fireplace is backdropped against earthy, serene colors; waitresses wear Thai silk dresses in colors that correspond with the decor.

Parking: Large lot

Price range: Starters — appetizers, soups, salads and sushi — run from $3 for fried spring rolls to $10 for yum (spicy) apple salad. Fried rice, noodles and curry entrees cost $10 for chicken, beef, tofu or vegetables and $11 for shrimp, scallops or squid. Duck, chef’s recommendations and Thai Basil house specials range from $13 to $15.

Credit cards: All major

Alcohol: None, but the owners have applied for a liquor license

Smoke-free: Yes

Reservations: First-come, first-served

Call them: 785-3030

Call us: Know a great place to dine out? Call The Press Entertainment department at 222-5685, or e-mail weekend@grpress.com.

The potential of the kitchen shines brightly in the cool lettuce wraps ($5), tofu islands ($5) and Thai Basil chicken wings ($5 for 6; $8 for 12), which are reason enough to come here.

For the lettuce wraps, four romaine lettuce leaves hold a mixture of chopped chicken with water chestnuts, mushrooms, green peas and oyster sauce. The triangles of homemade tofu, deep-fried and drenched with spicy gang curry sauce, perfectly captured the subtle nuance of Thai cuisine: hot, sweet and pungent.

The fried chicken wings coated with a Thai sweet barbecue chili sauce — a positively Western take on Thai ingredients — were surprisingly finger-licking good.

My husband, Rich, and I were joined by our friends, Von Norasing and Faite R-P Mack, who have spent the past 10 summers in Thailand, where they run an educational foundation.

Von, who teaches at Grand Rapids’ Stocking Elementary School, grew up outside Vientiane, the capital of Lao People’s Democratic Republic. Faite is a graduate professor of education at Grand Valley State University.

For the soup and salad courses, we discovered the tom yum soup with chicken ($4) and chicken laab salad ($8) were good but not great. A Thai restaurant staple, the tom yum’s faintly orange-hued broth yielded few lemon grass stalks and kaffir lime leaves. The soup, along with the highly stylized meat salad, lacked that balance of the sweet, sour and spicy that creates three-dimensional flavor.

A word about spice: We initially ordered everything extra hot because we’re tired of being disappointed by weak, tasteless Thai. But at Thai Basil Cuisine, when you order hot, you get killer heat.

We dialed down the spice to medium-hot, which delivered a tingling sparkle to our senses, culminating in a glowing heat.

Three entrees are hits

Among our entrees, we scored hits with the pla jien (red snapper), gang par (jungle curry) and pad see-ewew (soy sauce wide noodle dish). Only the masman curry was a miss.

The pla jien ($15) was a red snapper fried with shrimp, shredded pork, ginger, mushrooms and green onion simmered in Thai Basil sauce. The combination was memorable with feisty flavors from the ginger, green onions and signature sauce.

The northern Thai curry, gang par, ($10) arrived with a deceivingly light sauce with al-dente green beans, bamboo shoots and eggplant. A single taste was loaded with the clean, robust characters of Thai cuisine.

The soy sauce wide noodle dish, pad see-ewew, ($10) was a savory and mildly sweet change from the perennial favorite pad Thai.

Rich is enamored with a good masman curry ($10), a hearty curry thick with potatoes and beef, softened with coconut milk and peanut sauce. This version wasn’t especially fierce.

Not everything was perfect, but the Songs have been doing a fine job in the short time their establishment has been open.

The promise certainly is there for this to become the best Thai restaurant in town.

E-mail Jaye Beeler: jbeeler@grpress.com

http://www.mlive.com/grpress/entertainment/index.ssf/2008/10/thai_basil_cuisine_new_eatery.html

“If you can take your eyes off the fish, you might notice that the strong-jawed German passing you your basket of fried walleye looks an awful lot like the man holding the chubs in the black-and-white photo on the wall. The Bortell gene is so strong, in fact, that five generations have caught and cooked up “Hot Fried Fish To Go” right from this very spot on the Lake Michigan coast. German Uriah Bortell was first, back in 1898, then came Charlie, Floyd, David and now Kris Bortell. Kris works side-by side with his mom, Joann Bortell, wife, Trish, and two children, Justin and Marietta, today serving ultra-fresh fish from both far and nearby waters.

Famed road foodies Jane and Michael Stern named the 110-year-old fish depot one of America’s Top Ten Seafood Shacks, of the ilk of The Clam Shack in Kennebunkport, Maine, and the Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco. Bortell’s Fisheries seafood of choice is Great Lakes whitefish, but the menu also includes walleye, catfish, trout and smelt, all sold by the piece or pound, ready to take home or be fried to order before your eyes. Grab some old-fashioned wood-smoked fish or pickled herring for later and some hot fried smelt (cooked up tasty, fins, tails and all) or walleye (cut and fried in sweet, delicate strips) to gobble up immediately in your car or under the shade trees out front. The Bortells use the lightest, crispest dusting of breading and serve the fish in paper baskets with lemon wedges, paper packets of salt and pepper and little plastic peel-back containers of tartar sauce. They don’t take credit cards, so don’t find yourself as we did one day, scrounging for coins in the car cushions for one more round of smelt. Find more picnic tables across the road at the glorious Summit Township Park on Lake Michigan. The Bortells stay open through Labor Day weekend, until they sell out of fish. 5528 S. Lakeshore Dr., halfway between Ludington and Pentwater, 231-843-3337."

From http://www.mynorth.com