Aditi Indian Cuisine, Georgetown, D.C.

Last night, Ian insisted that I accompany him to dinner at 9:30 at Aditi Indian Cuisine, a little place in Georgetown on the corner of M Street about a block or two from where he lives (and a good mile-plus walk for me!).

Aditi is a pleasant restaurant with a very clean, very modern look to the dining room. It actually has a fairly small footprint, but they make up for it by using not only the ground floor for a dining room and bar area, but the upstairs for another dining room, and the downstairs for restroom facilities and other things (I didn't go down there to inspect). A stairway connecting the three levels is open and contemporary. Decorative arts are minimal and tasteful, with the one big "statement" piece being this elephant that hung in the upstairs stairwell. I let Ian select the menu for us to share, since his food preferences are considerably more restricted than are mine.

We had a very nice fruited chicken biryani (think the Indian version of Chinese chicken fried rice) that I found unusually good for a biryani. The chicken pieces were tender and flavorful, and not at all dried out as so often is the case with this dish. Our second entree was aloo chole, a tasty chickpea and potato spiced casserole. The main dishes came with white basmati rice with some fresh snipped herbs and spices, raita (yogurt with diced cucumber), pappadum (peppered lentil flour wafers); and lemon pickles, a very interesting hot condiment made of lemon peel turned red with spices.



We also got a couple of orders of puri, a traditional Indian bread that has been deep fried to make it puffy, rather resembling a big, round, Mexican sopapilla. The puri came with a bowl of "green sauce" made from puréed cilantro leaves, something that is very common at Indian restaurants, but this sauce was unusually good because it had been thickened with some yogurt.



A few weeks ago, Ian had been here and debated ordering the gulab jamun for dessert, but he and his companion were afraid to get it. Why? Well, the menu description here explains that it's a "deep-fried dry milk ball," and they were apprehensive. Well, I don't really like that description; the usual description on menus elsewhere is that they are deep-fried pastry balls, which, given the cake-like consistency of the food, is really a much better explanation. One large ball is a serving; it comes in a bowl with a hot honey sauce. I don't order this dessert often, but I like it well enough. Ian, though, was only willing to taste one bite. Good thing we only got one order.