About Little Serow
If you’ve been to Johnny Monis and Anne Marler’s English basement turned Thai restaurant in the last couple of years, you’ll likely be familiar with many of the plates on the seven-dish family-style menu. But like a band deep into its tour, the set list has become tighter and the chords more masterful, even if the songs are well known. The fabled fieriness has been finely tuned, too. Rather than making diners beg for palate-soothing glasses of full-fat milk from the start, the spicing now slowly builds, crescendoes (with a sweat-inducing tofu salad), then abates with a plate of mild pork ribs marinated with Mekong whiskey and strewn with dill. The servers, all got up in oxford shoes and dresses that could be called schoolmarm-chic, possess a genuine warmth and excitement—they seem as in love with the place as we are.
Don’t miss: Nam prik with pork rinds; snakehead dumplings with tom kha soup; mushrooms with holy basil and egg; minced-chicken-and-liver salad; fried chicken.
See what other restaurants made our 100 Very Best Restaurants list. This article appears in our February 2016 issue of Washingtonian.
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.
