Rasika Flavors of India, Washington, D.C.

We've often heard how there are only a couple of "good" Indian restaurants in town, and the one remaining place in that very short list at which I hadn't previously eaten happened to be one of the extenders for this summer's Restaurant Week, so off we went last Thursday for lunch. Rasika Flavors of India is that place, located near the Wooly Mammoth Theater near the Archives Metro stop. Rasika likes to distinguish itself from run of the mill Indian places by offering contemporary Indian cuisine.

Inside, the restaurant is starkly contemporary, though with warm honey-colored woods and soft earth tones to complement their modern Indian paintings and sculpture. It was a busy day (we had reservations at 1:45, when it should have been a slower time) and the restaurant was bustling.....bustling rather too much, I thought, because it was very, very noisy and difficult to carry on a conversation; we often had to ask our waitress to repeat herself, since we couldn't hear her. They also pack in the tables and chairs in the space, and we had to squeeze through other diners as we moved in and out of the dining room.

Robert opened his luncheon with palak chaat, a most interesting salad made of flash-fried bits of baby spinach tossed with a little bit of minced tomato and onion and a light amount of sweet yogurt dressing with a tamarind date chutney. The frying gave things a bit of crunch, and Robert found the salad quite enjoyable.

I chose the dakshini chicken tikka, basically a curried shish kebob of chicken smoked and barbecued in a tandoor. A green sauce tasting of fennel and star anise decorated the plate. It was a rather plain selection, and they had what is all too often a common problem with tandoori foods: a few of the smaller chicken chunks were a bit dry and overcooked, while one or two of the larger chunks were not fully cooked inside—something that always worries me with chicken. Fortunately, I did not get food poisoning later that day.

Robert had a much more successful tandoori experience with his main course, a large slab of Scottish salmon spiced with cinnamon and black pepper then cooked in the tandoor. I had a tiny nibble, and it had a lovely, delicate flavor and even with my outside edge, it was not over cooked. What looked like the same sauce as I had on my chicken appetizer also decorated Robert's plate.

I picked the lamb pista korma. Their version puts ground pistachios and cashews in the cream sauce, giving it a distinct green color. It was okay, but I definitely wasn't wowwed. In fact, I found the sauce to be rather thin and soupy, and I've had better korma at "common" places in town.

For dessert, Robert got the gulab jamun (those little dough balls in honey syrup) with cardamom ice cream, primarily, he said, because he wanted to try to ice cream. He decided the dough balls were surprisingly good, though, because, he said, they were light and didn't feel like they had been soaking in syrup for days. I got the carrot halwa with cinnamon sabayon sauce, and it was the only thing in my meal that I really liked. Halwa is a north Indian dish of shredded carrots and chopped cashews sweetened and then simmered in milk and butter.

My camera has decided to hide somewhere, so when and if I should find it, I shall upload the photos of the meal.

And that was our Rasika experience. It's an okay enough place I wouldn't mind going back to eat, but it didn't meet my expectations as one of the top two or three Indian places in town. Service was okay, if not a touch slow. Food was okay, but what I got was not outstanding; I think Robert definitely got the better of the two meals, though!