Shakthi, web site, 3807 Mount Vernon Avenue, Alexandria, VA, 703-739-2400, where Po Siam used to be, next to The Birchmere (Metro Trip Planner – opens in new window) [DelRay Patch]
This Sri Lankan restaurant is a knockout. Get the String Hoppers (picture) with fish curry, the Kotthu, and the Kiri Bath, which is fish curry with rice and milk and coconut sambal. I suspect the stuff wrapped in banana leaf is great too. There is also deviled potato, pumpkin curry, and green jackfruit cooked in coconut milk. High quality across the board. The restaurant also serves Indian and Thai dishes, but don’t let you that throw you, that is not uncommon in Sri Lanka also and thus it is as much a sign of authenticity as anything. I won’t be trying the Indian dishes anytime soon, but I would not be surprised if they made this place one of the areas’ best Indian restaurants, too. Go, go, go. Go!
Sounds great, Tyler! I’m going to try it. I took a cooking class in Thailand over the holidays. Yum.
We ate at Shakthi after reading Tyler’s posting. We not not disappointed. The food was good. As we have found with many new restaurants that serve spicy food, we found the food a bit too spicy. We ordered medium spicy, which I can easily handle, but it was a bit much for my wife, who eats in the mild-medium range. Usually after six months or so, the food gets less spicy. Americans think that they like really spicy foods, but that is only sometimes the case. We had mostly the dishes that Tyler recommended, and they had plenty of flavor to go with the heat. A Thai coconut-chicken soup was particularly good. Service was slow, as there was an unexpected shortage of staff that will be cured soon. We shall return.
Tyler’s right … Shakthi is fantastic, and it’s the real deal. It’s quickly risen to the top of my “go-to” list for the Del Ray neighborhood. I particularly like the goat curry and the “string hoppers”, which I know as idiyappam from other south Asian places. Don’t worry about the service … it’s been perfectly responsive and very friendly. Like Tyler says, “Go, go, go!”