Himalayan Heritage

 We're often torn about what to do for food after a workout. It's usually late, and we're usually tired, so we don't usually want to cook. But eating out two or three times a week would be a bit of a strain on our pocketbook. So, we're always looking for deals in Adams Morgan, especially for places that seem like they're not going to mind too much if we're a bit grubby. Himalayan Heritage fit this bill, so I got the deal, and we headed over.

 I wanted to try and order something that was more on the Nepali end of the spectrum, less on the Indian end, so I got the "Himalayan Karahi," a "Mixture of Barbeque chicken, and lamb cooked with tomatoes, capsicum and coriander leaves in medium spices with red wine tossed in an iron souk." My wife got the Muglin Thali, a combination of several different dishes featuring prominently a goat curry. The dominant theme of the meal was tough. My chicken was tough. Her goat was tough. It was tough to get service. We weren't very happy with the meal, but I was going to chalk part of it up to being crabby until I realized we were there for two hours. That's much too slow for service. Perhaps we caught them on a bad night, but I don't think we're going back.

Fojolmania

Photo by Ben Murray, on flickr.

Volothai, the Fojol Bros Thai truck, is good, but not great. The drunken noodles I found bland, and the beef was too chewy. The green curry is excellent. It's fairly spicy and made with Brussels sprouts, whose mustardy taste goes well with the curry. The chicken pad thai is, again, bland. There's not a lot of peanut flavor, no spicy, and the chicken is dry. The very large chunks of green onion didn't do it any favors.

The Indian truck is best known for its superb butter chicken. Just like any good butter chicken, it's quite creamy and moist, but theirs has a nice kick to it, a good complexity that a lot of butter chicken lacks. The cauliflower-potato dish is a bit less good. It has an odd bitterness and some of the potato chunks are a bit larger than they should be. It's not bad, though, and some of the problem might just be that it doesn't pair well with the butter chicken.

I've only been to the Ethiopian truck, Benethiopia once, and found it better than average, but because Ethiopian food doesn't get along well with office clothes, I haven't been back. Overall, Fojol Bros is a good choice for Indian food if you want something a bit different for lunch, but it's generally not exceptional.

Merzi

I've complained that, working in Penn Quarter, there aren't very many lunch options. Once you take out the variety of expensive restaurants, most of what's left are sandwich places. (Some of which are quite good.) The one place that stands out is Merzi, which founder Kaz Kazmi describes as the Chipotle of Indian food. I've never been to Chipotle, so I can't comment on that. But it is a nice splash of color in an otherwise bland food landscape.

The way it works, you pick out a base, a meat, and a sauce. For the base, your options are rice, naan, lettuce, or chaat (a mix of chickpeas, potatoes, onions, and red bell peppers). Alternatively, you can get it wrapped in a wrap. I've always gone with the chaat, just because it sounds like the tastiest option. For the meat, I've tried the lamb, the 'tandisserie' chicken, and the beef. Don't get the tandisserie chicken. It's bland, and dry, and because it comes in one piece, it's harder to blend with the rest of your food. I prefer the beef to the lamb. It's cheaper, and in smaller pieces, and about as tasty. Your mileage may vary, and it might just be due to the sauce rather than the meat.

Merzi offers six sauce, three hot masalas and three dry chutneys. I've tried the two spicier masalas, the creamy tikka and the onion tomato. The onion tomato is the superior sauce, with a really good kick to it, but the creamy tikka masala is also very good, especially if you're less into spice. In general, the food at Merzi is a bit bland for Indian food, and I wouldn't go out of my way for it, but it's a good addition to the scene in Penn Quarter.