Eat Great Cheap 2015This 23-year-old dining room, painted sea-foam green and crammed with house plants, takes a more rustic approach to Thai cuisine than its glitzy sister restaurant, Duangrat’s. When it comes to starters, focus on dishes you won’t find on many competitors’ menus. A ruddy, chili-spiked pork-belly-and-tomato dip—a Thai riff on Bolognese—is served with sliced cucumbers and puffed pork rinds. One set of ground-pork-filled dumplings trades traditional skins for sweet lychee bulbs. Bigger plates bring fiery drunken noodles and curries that are both velvety and searing, and the red-curry roast pork lives up to its can’t-miss reputation.
Cuisine: Thai
Where you can get it: 5892 Leesburg Pike, Falls Church; 703-671-4222
Also good: Fried-catfish salad; shrimp-and-pork dumplings; fried cod with garlic-chili sauce; roast pork with five spice, pickled ginger, and chili vinaigrette; fried duck with red chilies.
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.
