Oasis Cafe
1024 E Pike St, 323-3293
Mon-Fri 11 am-10 pm, Sat-Sun 11 am-midnight.
Live in Seattle long enough and you start to feel like we have more Thai restaurants than freakin’ Thailand. Every time a storefront closes down here, you half expect the next inhabitant to be some new Thai chef with a vision for making his or her Phad Thai the one this city’s talking about. Still, it was less my curiosity about the cuisine than the specific location–exactly one block away from work–that drew me inside the Oasis Cafe. In the past couple years, the restaurant space at the corner of 11th Avenue and Pike Street has turned over more than The Stranger‘s editorial staff, and not one of the businesses has lasted much longer than the time it took to walk there. Having tasted the work of its latest inhabitants, though, I give Oasis the inside track to conquer the curse of the space–mostly because of their lunch specials.
From 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., you can spend under $10 on a full meal–an entrée, Phad Thai, and steamed rice, plus a bowl of miso soup (which, if you’re getting it to go, you can down while waiting for your order, since they only offer it in-house). The Buddhist Tofu is especially rich, its golden garlic sauce (peppered with spicy red flakes) covering tofu, broccoli, snow peas, carrots, and mushrooms with just enough flavor to avoid drenching the food. The Pad Thai’s flavorful, greasy noodles are just as savory. All in all, it’s a monster meal for only $5.50.
Another factor working in favor of this “Asian Grill & Sushi Bar” is that it doesn’t focus solely on Thai food. Oasis serves a wide variety of Chinese and Japanese dishes and plans on debuting a sushi selection in August. While that might not be much of a stretch beyond the typical Thai restaurant approach, it ought to be enough to keep the lunch offerings as interesting as they are affordable.