It’s clear that Asian cuisine is one of Northern Virginia’s specialties. Whether you have a hankering for pan-fried dumplings, hand-pulled noodles, fresh sushi rolls, or anything in between, these 12 Asian restaurants from our 50 Best Restaurants list are sure to satisfy.
By Alice Levitt, Olga Boikess, Dawn Klavon, and Alyssa Langer
Price Key: Entrées = $ 15 and under | $$ 16–25 | $$$ 26–40 | $$$$ 41 and over | * = prix fixe only
Celebration by Rupa Vira
Ashburn | Modern Indian | $$
Four years into running this innovative restaurant, chef Rupa Vira is still pushing the boundaries of Indian cuisine.
For one, diners are unlikely to find Calamari 65 anywhere else. In her lush purple-hued dining room, Vira serves her version of the Indo-Chinese dish usually made with chicken, featuring tentacles coated in rice flour. They’re fried, then enrobed in a spicy red sauce dotted with fragrant curry leaves.
Other new dishes include a boneless lamb curry flavored with chipotle for a smoky burn that seems as suited to enchiladas as a dip for garlic naan.
But diners shouldn’t miss Vira’s classics, such as her Celebration Special, a creamy makhan malai that’s served amid a pour of dry ice and topped with rose petals and edible gold. There’s no skimping on creativity here, but what makes Celebration a destination is its outsized flavors.
Eat This:
Calamari 65, chipotle gosht, Celebration Special
Honest Grill
Centreville | Korean | $$$$
Henry VIII’s vast kingdom never included Goryeo — now known as Korea — but he would have felt right at home with the excess of a Korean barbecue feast.
Honest Grill, with its aged meats and walls lined with wine bottles, is a kingly alternative to the all-you-can-eat menus and low-quality options that define many KBBQ restaurants. Still, you can expect to leave stuffed.
Here, set menus called “guides” include everything from funky dry-aged Angus rib-eye to blanket-soft, thin slices of Duroc pork galbi.
For the best variety, order the pork and beef guide with its roster of tender cuts, both fresh and marinated. And don’t miss the legend-worthy stretch of the corn cheese, which is flavored with crispy bacon. King Henry would have accepted nothing less. Neither should you.
Eat This:
Pan-fried veggie dumplings, pork and beef guide, corn cheese with bacon
Ingle Korean Steakhouse
Vienna | Korean | $$$$
Remember Clara Peller? She gained fame in the 1980s for demanding, “Where’s the beef?” in Wendy’s commercials. If only she’d lived to experience this temple of bovine goodness.
If you’re not craving wagyu cooked to its ideal, dine elsewhere. The immaculately trained staff here doesn’t fire up the grill for any old meat. In fact, diners can also order gift boxes of the coddled cattle. Beef even appears in starters and sides such as steak tartare and fried rice.
The prix fixe features four heavenly cuts, including a marinated zabuton (“little pillow,” from the chuck primal) that could be called nothing less than meat candy. Everything from the rugged tri-tip to the marbled galbi is a gustatory delight. Here’s the beef we’ve all been waiting for.
Eat This:
Corn cheese, hwe moo-chim, wagyu cuts of the day
Kismet Modern Indian
Alexandria | Modern Indian | $$$
No one ever truly gets tired of chicken tikka masala and garlic naan. But what if that pillowy bread was instead stuffed with herbed blobs of goat cheese?
At this sequel to DC’s Michelin-recognized Karma Modern Indian, basics are elevated, but the real reason to dine here is for regional dishes diners won’t find anywhere else without making a pan-Indian food trip.
Case in point? Branzino pollichathu, a take on a Keralan dish that features a meaty, skin-on fish filet that’s fried, then coated with spices and finished in a banana leaf. Scooped up with the aforementioned bread, the heavily spiced fish is a passe-partout dish that’s as memorable a part of a casual lunch as of a special dinner.
Yes, you can order your garlic naan and your tikka masala here, but you’ll be rewarded handsomely for expanding your horizons.
Eat This:
Amritsari snapper, herb-and-goat-cheese naan, branzino pollichathu
Mama Chang (No. 9)
Fairfax | Chinese | $$
Mom knows best, and chef and restaurateur Peter Chang recognizes this at his Fairfax restaurant, a celebration of the important women in his family.
Homestyle Chinese cooking, including dishes that have been passed down for generations, shine here, amid attentive service and a casual, spacious atmosphere. Traditional foods transport diners from the modern, upscale restaurant to the kitchen of Chang’s family.
Take, for instance, Mama’s hand-pulled noodles with beef brisket — the rich broth, never-ending noodles, and fall-apart meat result in a bowl of pure comfort. Peking duck, boasting shatteringly crisp skin, delicate flesh, and all the fixings, is great for sharing. From flaky and sweet BBQ pork pastry to pan-fried yuanbao pork dumplings, the more dim sum, the merrier.
Culinary talent runs deep in this family, and a meal here is just short of getting invited to a Chang family dinner — we’ll gladly take it.
Eat This:
Scallion bubble pancake, BBQ pork pastry, hand-pulled noodles with beef brisket
Meokja Meokja
Fairfax | Korean | $$
You’re the type of diner who knows that the best things in life can come at the end of a lengthy line. The hustle and bustle at this energetic bulgogi slinger has your name on it. But you might not have to wait. Reservations for Meokja Meokja are available on OpenTable — they’re hard to get but worth it to avoid an hour or more walking around the parking lot.
Once at your table, festooned with banchan such as gingery salad, funky kimchi, and toothsome fish cakes, the best bet is Combo 2. It includes brisket, pork belly, bulgogi, and galbi, plus gooey corn cheese, a bubbling steamed egg, and tofu soup, all for $64 for two diners.
Yes, you’ll have to wait until the end of the meal for the sweet surrender of the marinated galbi. Think of it as your reward for skipping the line.
Eat This:
Sliced brisket, marinated beef short rib galbi, corn cheese
NUE: Elegantly Vietnamese (No. 8)
Falls Church | Modern Vietnamese | $$$
Grill-blackened Vietnamese sausage and a mound of garlicky rice are bathed in gravy. There’s nothing bland about this thickened jus — at first bite, the whole dish sings with the anise and clove of pho.
Welcome to NUE, where some of the world’s best dishes, whether it’s al dente pappardelle, or Hawaiian loco moco, are somehow improved with a fresh edge of Viet flavors.
Impressionistic flora dominates the main dining room, making the interior as exciting as what arrives from the kitchen. Brunch dishes are every bit as pleasing as the ambitious dinners.
At this year-old stunner, named for the French word meaning “naked,” dishes are stripped to their ideals, then reconceived even more scrumptious than before.
Familiarity with Vietnamese food isn’t a prerequisite, but a meal here quickly proves why it’s one of the planet’s great cuisines.
Eat This:
Vegetarian cha gio, bo kho pappardelle, Viet loco moco
Padaek
Arlington & Falls Church | Thai-Lao | $$
It wasn’t so long ago that dishes like khao soi and naem khao were considered exotic even to Southeast Asian food obsessives in our region. Since opening the original Padaek in 2010 in Falls Church, Laotian chef Seng Luangrath has raised the profile of her native dishes exponentially among NoVA’s diners.
With her new Arlington Ridge location, Luangrath, now Michelin-recognized for her DC restaurants, is upping her game even further. Order the naem khao thadaeu, crispy coconut rice salad with tangy pork sausage, to taste her origin story, then try the gaeng hang lay, a satiny Burmese-inflected curry, to experience the way she continues to break new ground.
Yes, a bowl of crispy noodles in the form of khao soi has probably become your comfort food in the past decade. Now it’s time to see what else Luangrath has up her sleeve.
Eat This:
Naem khao thadaeu, paa tawd, gaeng hang lay
Rice Paper
Falls Church | Vietnamese | $$
Familiar menu choices like pho are well-made at this Eden Center hub, but it would be a waste of a visit not to delve into its roster of less common specialties.
A flavorful hot pot brimming with chicken, seafood, rice, and vegetables exudes goodness. Leafy herbal greenery accompanies the crepe-like bánh xèo. It’s a hands-on dish that offers a rainbow of flavors and textures as one custom-crafts savory bites. Grilled fish with dill, a North Vietnamese specialty, evokes delicious memories of Hanoi. A cabbage salad loaded with shredded chicken (and its innards) is both satisfying and refreshing, as is a banana blossom salad with duck gizzards.
Shrimp wrapped in tofu skins along with shredded pork skin that punctuates a salad is another winner. Indeed, one could throw a dart at the menu; everything, from the familiar to the hard-to-find, is worth a taste.
Eat This:
Gỏi gà, bánh xèo, chả cá thì là
Roadhouse Momo & Grill
Ashburn | Nepalese | $$
Momos, those overstuffed, aromatically spiced dumplings for which Himalayan food is best known, get marquee billing here. But the ample menu invites diners to learn more about Nepalese cuisine.
Start with the sekuwa, spice-rubbed meat that’s lightly charred on the grill. At Roadhouse, order pork, chicken, paneer, or even buffalo in this fantasy of fire and flesh. The chow mein may be inspired by the familiar Chinese dish, but Nepalese spices suffuse it, allowing the flavors to take flight into the stratosphere. Fans of Indian butter chicken shouldn’t miss the makhmali chicken, a more robust version that’s as rich with chiles and cumin as it is with tomatoes and cream.
Yes, the juicy dumplings are worthy of your time and gastric real estate, but Roadhouse shows diners that Nepalese food is so much more than momos.
Eat This:
Sekuwa, chow mein, makhmali chicken
Sense of Thai
Ashburn | Thai | $$
The “St.” at the end of this stalwart’s name may have gone the way of the aurochs this year, but the street food hits keep coming. While you may have tried all of beverage director Jeremy Ross’ whimsical cocktails during the restaurant’s eight-year span, chances are there are still dishes from chef Porntipa Pattanamekar that you have yet to discover.
The sausage-packed Street Fried Rice is as redolent of sweet-and-sour tamarind as it is chiles, and both could bring sensitive souls to tears. If you’re moved by beauty (and heat), the crunchy papaya salad, som tum, could do the same.
This is the Thai night market dining you crave, with the service — and air conditioning — you deserve.
Eat This:
Som tum, Hang Over Lo Mein, Street Fried Rice
Yume Sushi
Arlington | Japanese | $$$
“Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” Thanks, Mae West, but sometimes, too much can simply be too much. At Yume Sushi, chef Saran Kannasute is well aware of this. He serves his excess-embracing fare in artfully austere presentations that make his version of “too much” exactly enough.
Yes, there’s more sweet Hokkaido sea urchin than you can likely force into your anticipating maw atop the thin noodles in a slick of garlic butter. But the uni pasta somehow still feels clean.
Thank the modern interior for some of this. It’s best to dine at the sushi counter, facing not only the action at hand, but also the eye-appealing graffiti mural.
Even when guests sup on A5 wagyu, monkfish liver, and French caviar, they’ll leave Yume Sushi feeling light and inspired.
Eat This:
The Winner, uni pasta, create-your-own roll
Feature image of Mama Chang by Rey Lopez
This story originally ran in our November issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
