St. Patrick’s Day in Chapel Hill is a raucous evening out.

I was on a business trip alone, hoping to find something quiet and exotic for dinner.

I walked past two different men dressed as leprechauns, both of whom seemed much more grim than that little guy who hawks breakfast cereal on TV. I wondered if perhaps their outfits were the consequences of lost bets. They didn’t seem open to any of the jokes that came to mind, so I held my tongue.

The Irish pub on the corner had a white tent set up in the alley. Inside, patrons wore green shamrock beads and a pair of musicians played fiddle tunes while two preteen girls Riverdanced with their arms welded to their sides.

It was crowded. It was loud. It was smoky. And, since I don’t eat meat, the only thing on the menu I could eat was Welsh rarebit, which I remembered gave Gomer Pyle nightmares. I looked around at the rowdy crowd and decided that holiday or not, I needed to celebrate more sedately.

In the next block I found what I was looking for: a Vietnamese restaurant called Lime and Basil. You can’t get much greener than that.

Inside there were only about eight tables. Soft music played, and an intelligent college-town crowd said smart things like, “I enjoy the work. I just don’t understand the nomenclature.”

I ordered jasmine tea that smelled like flowers every time I took a sip. My dinner was lemongrass stir-fried with tofu and jasmine rice. When the young waitress left the plate on the table and softly encouraged me to “Enjoy!” I waved the steam toward me just to drink in the aromas. If I had been yanked from my chair by the Rapture at that point, those heavenly smells might well have been enough.

I ate too quickly for the waitress, who frowned at me sternly and said as much. She was right. I had wolfed almost all of it down because it was such a delicious combination of delicate flavors.

And I was distracted by the woman who didn’t understand the nomenclature, who was describing how her traveling companions miscalculated the value of the Euro and overpaid for a pizza in Florence.

You don’t find ambience like that on St. Patrick’s Day just anywhere.

My dinner cost $13.00 with tip, and I had a little to carry back to the hotel for a cold snack later. Most dinner entrees at Lime and Basil were less than $10.

There were plenty of vegetarian and vegan choices on the menu, giving it five carrots on the Veg-o-Menu scale.