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