Cheap Eats 2015: Amoo’s Restaurant

Where we get our favorite spiffed-up kebabs.

About Amoo's Restaurant

cuisines
Chinese
Location(s)
6271 Old Dominion Dr
McLean, VA 22101
4316 Markham St
Annandale, VA 22003

Half a lifetime ago, Masoud Oveysi was the pilot for the shah of Iran. When the government collapsed, Oveysi fled to Northern Virginia, eventually opening a successful Persian restaurant, Cafe Rose. Amoo’s is a worthy successor, and Oveysi has handed over operations to his charismatic son Sebastian, who runs the kitchen and works the dining room. Though the younger Oveysi was born too late to have any memory of the royal family, he has brought a triumphal flair to this strip-mall effort. The humble kebab is exalted here—witness the magnificent kubideh, its minced, onion-flavored meat so light you could lay your head on it at night, or the hunks of lightly charred salmon (wild, not farmed). No visit is complete without an order of shirin polo, its delicate rice perfumed with saffron and strewn with candied orange peel and currants.

Cuisine: Persian

Where you can find it: 6271 Old Dominion Dr., McLean; 703-448-3868

Also good: Lamb kebabs; saffron ice cream.


Ann Limpert
Executive Food Editor/Critic

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.

Food Editor

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.