Eat Great Cheap 2015The kitchen works with the speed of a short-order operation, and the staff zips around the mess-hall-style room like roller-skating servers at a ’50s drive-in. But please don’t draw an equivalency between speed and slipshod at this cash-only gem. The kitchen at Huong Viet, the oldest restaurant at the Eden Center—Washington’s de facto Little Vietnam—remains as sure-handed as ever, whipping up plates of big, bright flavors with a precision and consistency sometimes lacking in bolder-face restaurants. All the hits are here, from lacquered quail to the complex noodle salad known as bun to the yolk-colored pancakes called bánh xèo.
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Where you can get it: 6785 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church; 703-538-7110
Also good: Bun cha (grilled pork and pork meatballs in a sweet sauce); caramel clay-pot fish.
Ann Limpert joined Washingtonian in late 2003. She was previously an editorial assistant at Entertainment Weekly and a cook in New York restaurant kitchens, and she is a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education. She lives in Petworth.
Anna Spiegel covers the dining and drinking scene in her native DC. Prior to joining Washingtonian in 2010, she attended the French Culinary Institute and Columbia University’s MFA program in New York, and held various cooking and writing positions in NYC and in St. John, US Virgin Islands.
