Eat Great Cheap 2016 Good for Vegetarians |
 Date-Night-Worthy |
Sensory overload kicks in the second you walk inside this Indian cafe. Its yellow-and-orange walls are inked with more quotes than a high-school senior’s yearbook, the ordering window sits atop a sea of discarded bottle caps, and most important, the scents of curry and coriander linger in the air. Everything is amped up when it comes to the Punjabi-style cooking, too. Take the butter chicken—at many places it’s sweet, creamy, and above all tame; here it’s dominated by a strong whiff of woodsy cardamom. Another typically meek dish, the spinach curry called saag, almost stings the tongue with heat. (Try it as part of a thali, a generous sampler that comes with rice and yogurt sauce.) A Kingfisher helps—it, along with bottles of Glenlivet and Jack Daniel’s, can be poured from a self-serve bar tucked into a nook by the window.
Also good: Baingan bharta (roasted eggplant); roti roll with lamb; goat curry; chicken masala.
See what other restaurants made our 2016 Cheap Eats list. This article appears in our May 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.
