(301) 610-0303

Over the years, I’ve sampled garlic naan, naan stuffed with goat cheese, kashmiri naan with nuts and raisins, and, of course, regular ol’ naan blackened and blistered straight from the tandoor. But until I dined recently at Spice Xing, the new Rockville restaurant opened by Passage to India’s Sudhir Seth, I had never tried khurmi naan. It’s naan covered with tomato sauce and sprinkled generously with shredded cheese. It is, in other words, pizza naan. The naan fits into Seth’s precise vision of Spice Xing, which features Indian dishes influenced by those European cultures that have had a presence on the Subcontinent, whether British, Portuguese, Spanish, or French. But since the Italians never laid a colonial finger on India, the natives had to improvise their own version of the classic Neapolitan flatbread, which wasn’t so easy in a country with few pizza or conventional gas/electric ovens. Even tandoor ovens are hard to find in certain regions in India, Seth tells me. Sometimes eight or more families will share one communal tandoor, or some enterprising soul will open a tandoori shop, where the locals will bring their own homemade dough to bake in the blazing hot clay ovens. Likewise, Seth notes, the ingredients that usually go into khurmi naan–commercial ketchup and processed cheese–are not always widely available in India. All of which is to say that khurmi naan is typically a restaurant item in India, not something made at home. Seth’s own version doesn’t stray far from the original back in the home country. About 40 percent of the sauce slathered onto his naan comes straight out of a ketchup bottle; the rest is homemade, a reduced tomato sauce infused with cloves, peppercorns, and bay leaves. The hybrid sauce is then topped with two kinds of processed shredded cheese–cheddar and white cheddar. So how is the naan? The sauce, which is ladled on thick, immediately creates a problem for those who like their naan (or their pizza, for that matter) to be both chewy and crispy; these slices go limp. The sauce itself is rather sweet, no doubt due to the large percentage of sugar-laden ketchup. The partially melted shredded cheese adds only a cold element of fat to the bread. The naan sort of reminds me of those Totino’s frozen pizzas from the 1970s, back before Wolfgang Puck and California Pizza Kitchen got into the freezer section of your local grocery store. I suspect that khurmi naan, in its own way, must hold a certain nostalgia for Indian immigrants in America. As for me, though, the flatbread’s fascination is limited pretty much to its history, not its taste.

(202) 637-1222

Rasika has done something to Indian food that it seems like no one else has: It’s made it modern. And, apparently, that’s what people have been dying for. “I lunched at Rasika for Restaurant Week and was extremely pleased.” “From the modern décor, including glass chandelier beads as a room divider, to the conversation-piece silverware to the knowledgeable waiter to the “where do I begin” comprehensive menu and subsequent exceptional quality food, Rasika lived up to everything I’d already heard about it.” “Rasika is a phenomenal restaurant-one of my favorite dining destinations in D.C.” “The menu is familiar to those who already love Indian food but includes dishes never before seen in a traditional Indian restaurant: asparagus uttapam (from the griddle section), sliced asparagus with spices served over a rice lentil pancake with coconut chutney (my favorite of the three small dishes I tried); broccoli cashewnut poriyal (a vegetarian entree or side).” “Their palak chaat is incredible and a must-have. It is one of those dishes that you will have cravings for.” The service lives up to the food. “The food is visually stunning and service is great. The sommelier is particularly helpful and they have a great selection of wines to complement their menu.” “The service was really fantastic. Our server brought me a second diet Coke before I had even finished half of my first!... I filled up on half of my lamb, and was given extra naan and rice to accompany my leftovers at home.” “There’s nothing I’d change about Rasika—except its popularity; this was the first time I could get a reservation on a choice night with less than a month’s notice.”

(202) 362-4444

If any man has reason to reign in the fattier excesses of Indian cooking, it’s Raj Kapoor, owner of Indian Ocean. Kapoor’s 67-year-old father died in 1994 from a heart attack, followed shortly thereafter by his 41-year-old brother, who dropped dead at the breakfast table. Three years later, the restaurateur’s 63-year-old mother died from a heart attack. Then in 2002, Kapoor had his own run-in with heart disease. The rash of tragedies helps explain why you won’t find a single stick of butter at Indian Ocean. The chefs here brush their naan with olive oil, not ghee. They substitute oil for butter (or shortening) in the samosa dough. They use a yogurt “cream” instead of butter and heavy cream in their chicken tikka makhani—better known as butter chicken—and then squeeze clover honey into the dish to provide the necessary sweetness. The results are startlingly good. The slightly soupy butter chicken may not have its usual heft, but there’s enough body to ferry all the flavors—the cinnamon, tomato, nutmeg, and fenugreek. The cauliflower and potatoes in the deeply aromatic aloo gobi benefit from steam cooking, which in particular gives the turmeric-tinted florets far more crunch than the standard sauté. You won’t even miss the ghee on your naan, which is satisfyingly chewy and bubbly. In keeping with its heart-healthy cuisine, Indian Ocean also leans on the Goan tradition of fresh fish, including a seafood curry that includes more than its share of chewy, overcooked scallops, calamari, and mussels in a lush, fragrant broth that deserves much better.

(703) 836-6363

British street food still hasn’t enjoyed the renaissance that British haute cuisine has enjoyed in the past decade—want fries with mashed peas on top? Nope, me neither—but damn do I miss me some onion bhaji. The palm-sized fritters, called pakoda by some, are—probably for the same reason you don’t often see General Tso’s chicken in British Chinese restaurants—hard to find stateside. Bombay Curry Company’s bhaji include potato chunks in the delicately spiced binding batter, and they are a glob of deep-fried, lip-burning heaven. The butter chicken also makes me glad I get a lot of exercise, but you don’t have to court death to eat here. There’s a tasty coconut-based fish curry and a kicky vegetable biryani, and any of the vegetable sides can be ordered as an entrée. Try the dal makhani, smoky, slow-cooked lentils, or the kadai chole, spicy chickpeas. They’re all grand, but oh, those bhaji: they’re still better than anything that’s ever slithered out of a chippie’s fryer at closing time. And even better, they won’t kick you in the stomach the next morning like that fifth pint most assuredly will.

(703) 677-0523

The first time I visited Pho Saigon in the Eden Center, at the urging of a Vietnamese acquaintance, I sat there listlessly over my bowl, wondering who or what was most off: my friend, my thin pho, or my tastebuds. Turns out that Pho Saigon was merely having an off day. I have since returned to the Vietnamese noodle house and have found its soups spectacular. My most recent order came swimming with thin slices of richly fatty brisket, crunchy/chewy tripe, exquisitely perfumed beef broth, and a garnish plate brimming with fresh sliced jalapeños, Thai basil, bean sprouts, and even that rare saw-toothed leaf, culantro. Pho Saigon also pays attention to the noodles in its soups; they’re soft, supple, and so easy to slurp. The tiny pho shop, overstuffed with trinkets and pictures and even boxes of kitchen supplies near the bathroom, might remind you of a crowded Vietnamese street stall if not for the overhead flat-screen TV set to the Speed Network, where racing school buses provide a little Southern redneck comfort. Yep, you get a melting pot along with your noodle soup. The truth is, if not for the dark memory of my first visit, I’d rank Pho Saigon over Pho 75, that suburban institution that consistently hits the mark at prices impossible to resist. Perhaps in 12 months that memory will finally be evaporated—by all the steaming bowls of noodle soup I plan to slurp down at Pho Saigon.

(703) 531-1881

The early word on Present in Falls Church was almost too good to be true. Such praise tends to, at least for me, set the bar impossibly high, especially for a transplanted Vietnamese chef who’s just beginning to understand the American palate and the D.C. market — and how they differ from back home. But I’ll tell you what, after my first visit last weekend, I’m itching to roll out the superlatives. From my perspective, chef Luong Tran isn’t necessarily re-inventing Vietnamese cuisine for our market as much as he’s taking an extremely fresh approach to it. Everything I sampled—from the autumn rolls to a slippery Vietnamese-style rice crêpes—popped with freshness, down to the bright orange julienne carrot garnishes, which are often dry, scaly afterthoughts in lesser restaurants. Now, granted, Present is a little precious, in that Eastern religion-meets-New Age puffery that kept so many self-help gurus employed in the ’90s. The interior is truly a calming, wood-heavy space with a silent waterfall in the middle. The menu attempts to further create a meditative setting with its philosophical introduction that suggests we all have gifts and presents in our lives. “Whether we can receive them or not depends entirely on our ability to be present in the moment to enjoy them,” the intro tells me. The truth of that statement is unquestionable, and I can see how owner Gene Nguyen has meticulously groomed his space to try to ease my burdens upon entry so that I can open my mind and palate to his chef’s handiwork. But the whole serene concept took a left turn when I started reading some of the dish descriptions, which are written in both English and Vietnamese and which carry an extra, fable-like name. I’m sorry, but I laughed out loud at such anthropomorphic names as “Pig and Friends Crepes” and “Resting Steer on Haystack.” Yeah, that creature is resting all right. My fable-resistant personality aside, I savored the real-life food in front of me, particularly the “Silken Shawl Imperial Autumn Roll,” which takes a filling of marinated and minced prawn/pork meat and encases it in an exquisitely crunchy rice wrapper that looks as if Jackson Pollock created it. I asked our server how the chef makes the wrappers, and the guy provided me with a delightfully detailed story. Chef Tran, he said, takes the rice batter in his hands and lets it drip from each finger, as he zigzigs his arms over a hot wok. At precisely the right moment, Tran peels these lacy wrappers from the wok and uses two sheets for each roll. While the aforementioned Pig and Friends Crepe couldn’t match the autumn roll’s designer quality, its noodles, fresh and soft and delicate, were the perfect contrast to the rock-hard shrimp cake (which had the quality of a fossil, with its empty tail shells cemented right into the maroon block) and the thick slab of pork cake. The simple preparation of grilled pork over vermicelli was even better: Once all the ingredients (carrots, daikon, lettuce, peanuts, scallions, pork, noodles, summer roll, and sprouts) were all mixed together, I dug into what was one of the freshest, most flavorful entree salads I’ve ever tasted. As good as the food was, the service surpassed it. Present takes a collective approach to wait staffing. Any one of several waiters may sidle up to your table during the course of your meal. They will all know what they’re talking about, and if by chance they don’t, they will actually go and find an answer—rather than hoping you’ll just blow the inquiry off. One waiter even honored my tablemate’s request for an extra spicy “Gregarious Lemongrass Chicken” dish. The plate came loaded with sauced breast pieces, each laden with those tell-tale red-pepper flakes and more than enough lemongrass (and maybe sugar?) to give that considerable blast of heat a proper sense of balance. My dining partner was practically giddy that Present didn’t treat her like a gringo—or whatever the slang term would be in Vietnamese. To top it all off, the check even comes with a helpful tipping guide at the bottom.

(703) 241-2722

Gulf Coast dishes—Alabama crawfish, Texas blue crabs, Cajun shrimp, and Louisiana oysters—dominate the right-hand side of the menu at Sea Side Crab House; the left-hand side features a list of wok items, including a number of seafood dishes tossed with garlic and scallions. The idea that Vietnamese would adopt a Cajun specialty like crawfish may seem odd, but owners Tom Vo and Danny Nguyen took their inspiration from the Vietnamese-run crawfish houses on the Gulf Coast. What does that mean for the mudbugs at Sea Side? It means that these specimens, before they ever reach boiling water, are marinated in garlic, ginger, scallions, tangerine juice, lime juice, and fish sauce, that great umami agent of the East. From there, the crawdaddies follow a more traditional Louisiana path, a hard boil with that blast of cayenne we all associate with the shellfish. All told, the recipe makes for the best-tasting crawfish I’ve had, anywhere, even without the array of tableside condiments that the Vietnamese so love. Sea Side’s Vietnamese approach leads to other surprises, some more pleasing than others. An order of raw oysters arrived on the half shell sans their liquor and topped with ice cubes; Vo claims that Vietnamese don’t like “all the dirt and the sand and the flavor from the original shell,” so Sea Side thoroughly cleans its oysters to remove the grit—and flavor. If you like a taste of the sea, just tell someone; they’ll leave the liquor in. My favorite example of fusion, however, is probably not even a blend of cultures at all. It’s a dish of North Carolina soft-shell crab, which is battered, deep-fried, and quickly tossed in blazing-hot wok with sugar, ginger, scallions, onions, jalapenos, and garlic. These sweet, spicy clumps of crustacean are then served on a bed of dressed lettuce and garnished with cooling sprigs of cilantro, the whole thing so tasty, crunchy, and complex that I start to salivate just by thinking about it again. Now, if you’re myopically American and refuse to believe that Vietnamese have a tradition of deep-frying softies, you might call this an East-Coast meets-Southeast-Asia dish. I’d prefer to call it what it really is: A dish in which the Vietnamese school us in how to best prepare one of own signature ingredients.

(703) 534-3342

Think of the Dogfish Head Alehouse less as a place to eat than as a food trough to fill your stomach so you can enjoy more of the Delaware brewery’s high-alcohol, highly addictive craft beers. The Falls Church ale house, the second locally owned franchisee of the famous brew pub in Rehoboth Beach, looks more conceptualized (kind of a Bennigans-meets-boat-house ambience) than the Gaithersburg outlet, even though both places share virtually the same menu. Grease and carbs will demand all your attention, but don’t overlook the lowly Caesar, a small bowl for chopped romaine served with a powerful, tart roasted garlic dressing and slivers of Parmesan. The double-patty barbecue burger, by contrast, is a mountain of meat, tomato, bacon, cheddar, and a lone onion ring; if it weren’t for the sandwich’s utter mushiness, you’d never be able to get your mouth around the sweet-and-savory concoction. The ultra-thin-crust pepperoni pizza comes with three different cheeses, including, ugh, provolone. It results in a pie so thick with cheese that you can hear Peter Pastan’s heart breaking (or stop beating) all the way over at 2Amys. The only reason to walk in the door at the Dogfish Head Alehouse is found not on the food menu, but at the bar, where they pull some of America’s best beers, including a coffee-like Chicory Stout that’s good drinking during these cold winter nights.

(703) 836-8851

The Waffle Shop, which occupies a strange, triangular peninsula of cement, like Alexandria’s own tiny Flatiron Building, is one of the city’s few 24 hours a day/7 days a week operations. A few years back, the Alexandria Gazette Packet wrote a story about the owners losing every set of keys to the place but never bothering to replace them since the business never, ever closes. At all hours you can look through large picture windows and see a gritty, grease-spattered Edward Hopper scene: construction workers, bus drivers, and other folks sitting at the grungy, counter scarfing down food out of Styrofoam containers. The secret to the Waffle Shop’s success? Clarified butter. Turns out, it’s not just for steamed lobster. There’s a big vat of melted, translucent fat sitting on the counter, ready to be ladled onto thin, crispy waffles as the cook pulls them out of the old-fashioned industrial iron. It may sound horrifying, but the melted butter concept is genius. A pat of butter may leave a delicious pool in the center of a waffle, but it never extends to the crusty outer edges. The Waffle Shop method allows butter to soak into every one of the waffle's, and eventually your, pores. Accompaniments include fat, finger-like links of beef sausage or nice fatty bacon too weighed down with lard to crisp up much. You can also order something else entirely—chicken, sandwiches—but why would you? The place is called the Waffle Shop, after all. Actually, thanks to a typo on the green awning out front, it’s called the “Wafle Shop.” Locals pronounce the misspelled name phonetically, calling the place the “Way-full” shop, which is more fitting than the place’s real name.

(703) 920-6103

Bob & Edith's offers, depending on how you count them, five or six different steak-and-egg combinations, in addition to breakfast platters that include turkey, bologna, and half-smokes. Such a wealth of wacky options allows you to never order the same thing twice, but it's really designed to let you order the same dish forever. (I like the gravy-splattered country-fried steak and eggs.) The magic of cholesterol is such, though, that it's harder to explain the autographed Cowboys poster on the wall than to find a clunker on the menu—the sausage is superb, as is the toast and what might be the best pancakes I've ever tasted. And the griddled burger—get it with mayo—will necessitate some fine-tuning of your qualms about the industrial food chain. Across Columbia Pike, a crane looms over some new development, a not-so-gentle reminder that de-skeezing Columbia Pike is next on Arlington's to-do list. That process that may have slowed down thanks to the crappy economy, but you have to wonder what its inevitability means for Bob & Edith's. Not that the restaurant could feasibly be moved without Superfund involvement–40 years of serving up grease may have cemented the diner in place, physically as well as in the plaque-clogged hearts of late-night carousers soaking up the poison, the post-Mass crowd catching up with friends, or the guy sitting alone at a booth, reading the paper and drinking an ever-refilled cup of joe.