Eat Great Cheap 2013When the gluten-intolerant say they long for bread, this is the sort of meal they must dream of. Bakhtiyor Rakhmatullaev’s cooking evokes bitter winter nights in Moscow, when everyone seeks warmth and rib-sticking comfort in the form of meat pies and dumplings. These include chebureki, a spiced-beef pastry that can stand as the centerpiece of a light lunch or kick off a night of carbo-indulgence climaxing with pelmeni, a tortellini-like dumpling filled with ground beef, or manti, fist-size ravioli stuffed with sliced beef and buried beneath drifts of yogurt.
Cuisine: Russian/Uzbek
Where you can get it: 1000 N. Randolph St., Arlington; 571-312-4086
Also good: Fish Under a Fur Coat, a salad of herring, beets, and carrots; chicken Kiev; plov, a rice casserole with lamb and raisins.
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.
