Best Cheap Eat Washington D.C. Thai X-Ing Washington D.C.

A Thai restaurant that is difficult to get a reservation for? Color me interested. In New York City, I can’t think of a single Thai restaurant that you have to wait for let alone one that requires a reservation. When asking around to find out restaurants that I needed to try during my trip to D.C. a friend told me about Thai X-ing. “It’s hard to get a reservation at, they don’t answer their phone, you have to email them or leave a message and they call you back.” Immediately, I furiously typed out an eager email hoping that I could snag a table for that weekend. A few days later I got a call from them, feeling like I had conquered the world. Okay, maybe it actually wasn’t as hard as I anticipated but you do have to give a credit card when they call you back to the secure the reservation so they mean business. I set up our reservation for Sunday night and then sat back and excitedly waited for our trip to approach.

Thai X-ing’s concept is serve a small, preset menu full of delicious, Thai food in a warm, homey environment. The restaurant’s dining room is a converted living room of an apartment. Aside from a vegetarian option, there are no exceptions made to the preset menu. You pay $30-$40 per person and you get whatever menu the chef has planned for that day. But trust me, these guys know what they’re doing.

When you arrive, a woman with an earpiece as serious as Obama’s Secret Service radios in your arrival to staffers in the kitchen. The restaurant is currently BYOB so we brought a wine-opener and some glasses. Moments later the first (of many) courses arrived: Lemongrass soup, Vegetarian spring rolls and papaya salad. The soup was truly better than anything I had in Thailand. It was bursting with flavor and spices while not being too spicy. The papaya salad the spring rolls were perfect too-the salad crunchy and filled with extremely fresh vegetables, the spring roll the perfect crispiness. Then came the entrees-all four of them! The menu changes based on what’s in season and whatever whim the chef is feeling but you can expect a couple curry dishes, a stir-fry of some sort (we had tofu as it was a vegetarian evening) and some kind of noodle (we enjoyed a a wide rice noodle with various veggies and tofu). The pumpkin curry we had was again better than anything I tried in Thailand-and that is saying alot because I immensely enjoyed the food there. I still say worth every spicy stomach-ache I incurred. For dessert you will enjoy mango and coconut sticky rice, a traditional Thai dessert I had been dreaming of since our honeymoon.

To make reservations or learn more about Thai X-ing, visit them online or call them at 202-332-4322