There’s lots to like about the colorful Foggy Bottom extension of the Cleveland Park restaurant, starting with the fact that the new place is double the size. The extra room translates to a bigger adventure — an exhibition kitchen fronted with stools and a ceiling lit up with cane baskets — and a longer list of Indian street food snacks, including sliced smoked eggplant, onion and feta in a light wrap of roti, and a quartet of gingery lamb meatballs, dappled with a sauce of tomato and mace on a base of sunny saffron rice. At any given meal, the clientele, wedged into tables that are too small for everything they want to order, resembles a Benetton ad. (The World Bank is a neighbor.) The result is barely controlled chaos in what feels like a Mumbai market at prime time. Loud, in other words, but also a treat, especially if your passion is for steamed rice cakes and chicken curry, and there’s not a trip to India on the horizon.
(2 1/2 stars out of 4)