Sweet Basil

Still great after all these years! Still trying to figure out how they make their pesto sauce. Oh well I’ll just keep going back.

If only I could bathe in their pesto. Ahhhhhh that alone could be the reason I’ll always make a point to dine here when in the Boston area. But there’s so much more beyond the holy pesto, believe it or not! Super cute quaint place with seriously good food. I love the Rosemary chicken over homemade ziti in a garlicky cream sauce. And of course I mix in that pesto. Portions are very large-​always split it with my husband and get some greens in me before devouring the cheese heavy carb load of a meal.
No reservations. No alcohol served. But I kinda like it that way because you just bring your own wine and it’s all the more special!

Love this place. Food is amazing yet staff and atmosphere unpretentious. We have gone 2x now over the past year and had a wonderful time. Table layout is more than tight. Pesto is amazing (somehow nut free I think they said)…and you can buy some to take home. Looking forward to going back !

This place is a GEM! So cozy and the food is made with lots of love. The pastas are super tasty and cooked just right. I highly recommend trying the lamb, definitely one of my favorite dishes here! Keep it up, Sweet basil!

The best Italian food around. Love it and would drive an hour to eat hear. Oh I did !! First come first serve but worth the wait. The lobster ravioli is to die for!!!

Great local place! Love eating at this place, almost anything and everything on the menu is delicious. This place is also BYOB, so if you do want to enjoy a nice glass of wine you’ll have to bring it. Keep in mind their cash only policy and expect to wait in line as they don’t take reservations. I definitely recommend you take a taste.

So excited to be picking up some risotto with peas and a side of the best pesto around this area

Very good pesto and bread for appetizer!
We love the duck confit and mussels for appetizer. Mussels were a little too salty but it was all good. The entrée shrimp pasta however was Mediocre. A lot of jumbo shrimps but the pasta sauce wasn’t flavorful.
There’s always a line here. I will return try their more signature dish.

Ordered the Buffalo Chicken sandwhich. It was fast and had a strong buffalo taste. The blue cheese was real cheese and paured well. Not really worth 8.50. Less than 4 oz of chicken.
Next time i will try the pizza

This restaurant rivals the best of the North End. The food is outstanding. You can’t go wrong with the cauliflower gnocchi. The gnocchi is cooked to perfection, and the smoked paprika sauce is delicious. Their pork chop and bolognese are also very good. It’s BYOB, so I always stop at Needham Wines just down the street for a bottle to take with me.
The vibe is a little funky, definitely fun and lively, but not fancy. For anyone familiar with restaurants in the Bar Harbor or Southwest Harbor area, it has a similar aesthetic to places you’d find there. It’s equally good for a date night outing or dinner with friends and family. They clearly focus on the food, which is just so, so good. Excellent, friendly service, as well.

This is probably the first time I am writing a restaurant review that I didn’t even eat there and I already hate it!
My husband finally convinced me to try this restaurant. It is 615pm and I have a hungry toddler. My husband called the restaurant asking how long is the wait for two adults and a toddler. The man on the phone answered «I can sit you right now if everyone is present». My husband said «we are on our way» and the man on the phone responded «Fine».
We got there 10 minutes after we hung up. We went up to the host and told him «two adults and a child» and he confirmed back «oh for party of four», I said «NO three all together!». Then the host responded by saying the wait is about 20 minutes. We hesitantly left our name. 15 minutes into the wait we checked back in with the host on our table status. The host then told us the restaurant does not have any high chair or booster seat and offered a wine box from the basement for my child to sit on as a booster replacement. Unhappily we remove our names from the waiting list and left. We found another restaurant nearby and ordered our food, then the phone rang and it was the Sweet Basil host telling us that our table is ready! My husband angrily told the host «we took our names off because you have no seat for my child. REMEMBER??»
I don’t care how good your foods are, this will not be the service I want to deal with at a restaurant.

Great restaurant nestled in Needham Square. Metered parking. Sweet Basil has a warm, cozy atmosphere with an open kitchen. My waitress was friendly and attentive. The food was great. The Rosemary Chicken was was in a rich cream sauce that was delicious. My son selected the New York Strip. They cooked it just the way he ordered. I will definitely come back for more.

Sweet Basil is honestly my all-​time favorite Italian restaurant. I came in on a Thursday night with 10 other people, and because this restaurant doesn’t take reservations, we were prepared to wait. However, the restaurant was even more packed than we had originally anticipated and it ended up being about a 1 hour 30 minute wait.
Normally, waiting this amount of time just to get seated would make me really hangry (hungry + angry), but not going to lie, this is the first restaurant where I actually had an exceptionally great experience BECAUSE of the wait. The owner was beyond kind and brought out appetizers for us to snack on while waiting (since he understood how dangerous it was being the only thing standing between 10 hungry college students & their food) & taking our orders beforehand so that we could have the food brought out the minute we were seated.
Also, huge plus, they have great substitutes for pescatarians!!! My favorite is the Rosemary Chicken — meat + shrimp.

This place has definitely slipped. I went there last week and the service was terrible. The waitperson was very surely and seemed annoyed by my reasonable requests (ie replace silverware). The food also seems not as good. The balsamic chicken was too vinegary and chicken parm was really salty. The owner opened a new place in Wellesley and seems to have taken his eye off of Needham. Too bad, was a favorite– especially since they started taking credit cards.
Update: they now charge for bread and pesto when your doing takeout. I asked why and they said its so they can afford to give it away for free to dine in customers. But they don’t charge less for take out???

Sweet Basil is a ¹⁰⁄₁₀. Rosemary Chicken came in an intricate cream sauce which was a nice diversion from the ordinary. It had complex flavors that I enjoyed. The pesto was so good I paid for a container to bring home. When the food lives up to the atmosphere you know you’ve got a winner.

Food is unique and delicious if cooked by the owner, but the taste is not consistent when he has other people do it. I first went to sweet basil by registering for a cooking class through needham’s continued education program. The owner is a master when it comes to cooking food. He made pasta from scratch and so many dishes such as trout on a bed of baby bak choy that tasted amazing.
Naturally I thought this restaurant would be good. It is, but it all depends on what you order and the night that you come in. I’ve ordered the muscles, I had the ravioli, the portions are big and some nights the food is really good and other night’s its very forgettable.
They don’t do reservations, BYOB, and free cold bread with a pretty good pesto sauce. The price is reasonable, but I wish they would hire chefs that can make the food with consistent taste quality.

Cannot say enough. Perfect, if you plan on waiting!
(It’s worth it.)
Other than the bread and pesto, which will be hard to not fill up on, everything they’ve ever put on the table in front of me was absolutely delicious. The New York strip is one of my favorites. Great portions at very reasonable prices. Cant wait to come again!

Great Italian restaurant in Needham, they are always busy and have big portions for reasonable prices. No reservations isn’t the best, but it is worth the 45 minute wait. There aren’t a ton of good restaurants in Needham, so this is usually crowded.
The food is great, huge portions and great tasting. We had the tuna special, a bowl of pasta and the chicken parm. We also had the goat cheese/​beet salad and the gouda salad. Both were great. The pesto with bread in the beginning is amazing.
Great spot, it gets crowded and close inside, it takes a little to wait for the food but worth going to. And BYOB for the wine is great, keeps the cost of the dinner way down.

Super impressed with the food at Sweet Basil. For a reasonable price (entrees $ 20 – 30) we got big portions of delicious food. And the free bread and pesto to start is amazing!
We ordered the following:
–Duck Confit: Really delicious and great texture duck over salad
–Porchetta: Delicious pork perfectly cooked over a bed of spaghetti squad
–Clam and Sausage pasta: al denta pasta with delicious sausage and clams
The service, food and ambience were great. Highly recommend it.

After hearing about Sweet Basil for years, I was so excited when we finally got the chance to go!
We went at 5 on a Friday night (we have a toddler), and were seated right away, which I understand is rare. They don’t have any high chairs, so my husband ran home to get our travel one, which is a negative. But the staff was so baby/​kid-​friendly, that it’s not a huge deal.
They immediately brought yummy bread with a DELICIOUS pesto sauce. I couldn’t get enough. And the waitress said I could get a small bowl of pasta with butter or sauce for my son. That came out quick and was a good size. It wasn’t anything amazing (pasta with sauce), but he enjoyed it.
I got the special risotto and my husband went for his standard — the chicke parm. The portions are huge (although he polished his off) and both were tasty but not amazing. Maybe our expectations were so high due to the rave reviews? My risotto was quite salty and his chicken wasn’t as crispy as he likes. Don’t get me wrong — we enjoyed it and would go back, but we weren’t wowed as much as we thought we’d be.
We loved the funky atmosphere — they had fun music & décor.
My husband paid while I brought our son outside, so I don’t know exactly how much everything was, but it’s not cheap. Which is not a surprise.