Food costs are rising and economic conditions are tenuous, leaving many of us in a budget-conscious state of mind. But there’s more to life than eating in. Our restaurant critic hit up 10 casual eateries for terrific meals that come in around $25 or less. The prices that follow exclude beverage, tax and tip.
Tiffin at Delhi Dhaba
For a heady mix of complex flavors, the “Create Your Own Tiffin” special ($21.95) at Delhi Dhaba, a longstanding destination for Indian food in Courthouse, is hard to resist. The feast includes two chicken dishes (vindaloo, butter, tikka masala, curry and/or a daily special, such as korma), a vegetable (palak paneer, moong dal, chole or daal makhani) and basmati rice, plus a side of warm and blistery naan, pulled piping hot from the restaurant’s tandoor oven. A vegetarian tiffin is also available.
As the name suggests, this lavish and colorful meal arrives at the table in a tiffin—a carrier that stacks the various dishes in metal containers to keep them separate. “We used to call it mix and match,” explains Raghav Dumera, who co-owns the restaurant with his mother, Daisy. “We started out in 1991 as a carryout. People on the go, especially taxi drivers, would double park on Wilson Boulevard and run in to pick up food. As young professionals moved in, we transitioned to a nice sit-down restaurant—plus carryout—and created the tiffin experience, which ties into our Indian culture.”
Daisy Dumera and her late husband, Yogi, immigrated to the U.S. from Delhi in the 1980s, naming their restaurant after the roadside food stands in India called dhabas. The restaurant seats 45 inside and 30 on an outdoor patio festooned with colorful faux flora.
The kitchen’s abundant offering of chaats, pakoras (fritters), street foods and curries, along with Indian-inspired cocktails and a flight of homemade lassis, easily lives up to the motto emblazoned on servers’ T-shirts: Khao, piyo, aish karo means eat, drink and have fun. // Delhi Dhaba, 2424 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, 703-524-0008
Tuesday Tacos & Elote at La Tingeria
In 2021, chef David Andres Peña opened his diminutive 20-seat taqueria at the corner of South Washington Street and West Westmoreland Road in Falls Church. I was shocked when the bill during my latest visit came to just $12 (before tax and tip) for three tacos plus elote, toothsome corn on the cob slathered with garlicky mayo and sprinkled with tajin. As luck would have it, I was visiting on a Tuesday, when tacos are priced at $2 instead of the usual $3.50, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Peña’s business, which started as a food truck, is named after his signature tinga tacos—double corn tortillas rife with tender chicken breast made smoky from chipotle peppers and stewed in a tomato-based sauce with caramelized onions. The birria taco, a corn tortilla stuffed with succulent braised beef (or goat) and gooey mozzarella cheese, is crisped on the griddle and downright addictive. It’s also available in quesadilla form ($13), served with a side of crema.
While the traditional preparation of tacos al pastor centers on marinated roast pork, Peña’s halal version—his now trademarked “hal” pastor—is a fan favorite he introduced during the pandemic when he made his food truck halal to accommodate Muslim customers. It swaps out the pork for marinated chicken thighs, which are chopped and topped with the usual pineapple, red onions and cilantro. // La Tingeria, 626 S. Washington St., Falls Church, 571-648-9167
Combo Platter at Arlington Kabob
The scent of rosemary, basil and garlic rises from behind the counter of this tiny, 22-seat storefront, where chef and managing partner Ali Endra has been overseeing rows of kebabs sizzling on the grill ever since the place opened in 2013. Of the 21 platters depicted in colorful photos, my favorite is the No.12—a lamb and chicken combo ($15.99) piled with two kinds of fluffy basmati rice (one rendered brown by caramelized onions), plus julienned peppers and onions, your choice of side dish (think spinach stew or chickpeas) and naan. Two yogurt-based sauces are offered as condiments—a white one made with olive oil and lemon juice, and a zesty green version incorporating cilantro and jalapenos.
Owner Susan Clementi, who lives in Falls Church, was born in London to an Afghani mother and Turkish father. She grew up in Arlington and spent 22 years working restaurant jobs before switching to a career in telecom. Her return to the hospitality business was prompted, in part, by her dismay that there weren’t more nourishing, healthful takeout options to pick up after work for a family dinner.
Arlington Kabob pays tribute to the food she grew up with, including Afghanistan’s national dish, quabli pulao ($16.99), braised lamb shank atop fragrant rice dotted with carrots, raisins and almonds. In addition to providing good value, Clementi believes in supporting the community. She offers a 15% discount to police and members of the military. She opened a sister restaurant, Courthouse Kabob, in 2019. // Arlington Kabob, 5046 Langston Blvd., Arlington 703-531-1498
Banh Mi at Nhu Lan Sandwich
DMV food cognoscenti know that for excellent banh mi, it’s worth a drive to this Eden Center eatery. Owner Ha Lu has been serving up the beloved Vietnamese sandwich on crusty French bread ever since 2006, when she took over the business her sister founded in 1986. Two small tables outside the teeny shop offer seating for four, but it’s otherwise a takeout operation.
These days, Lu takes orders at a table blocking entry into the store, a practice that started during the pandemic. Each of the eight sandwiches on the menu is priced at $8, having crept up from the $2 they were on my first foray there decades ago. Lu only takes cash—everyone knows that. I hand her $20 for two banh mi and call it a day.
The top-selling No. 1, thit nguôi (aka Combination), features housemade pork pate, head cheese and steamed ham, plus the standard garnishes—cucumbers, pickled daikon radish and carrots, sliced jalapeno, cilantro sprigs, and a shmear of the slightly sweet, house-made mayo that Lu calls beurré.
The No. 1 may be the most popular, but Lu’s personal favorite is the No. 5 (bì) packed with strips of roasted pork belly, including the crunchy skin. Fish lovers will go crazy for the No. 8 (cá), stuffed with good quality sardines. // Nhu Lan Sandwich, 6763 Wilson Blvd., Falls Church, 703-532-9009
Churrasco Guatemalteco at Café Sazon
This charming eatery serving Latin American fare and baked goods on Columbia Pike since 2010 came about by accident. The previous tenant was closing and the landlord asked Eva Sejas, owner of Cassiel’s Hair Salon next door, if she was interested in the property.
“A coffee shop seemed like a good idea, but coffee and pastries weren’t enough to pay the rent, so we started adding Bolivian dishes to the menu,” explains Sejas’ daughter Claudia Camacho, who immigrated to the U.S. from Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1989—paving the way for her mother and her sister, Adriana Torres, to follow a year later. All three now live in Arlington and co-own the 80-seat Café Sazon, which also has a 20-seat outdoor patio.
Over time, the restaurant has hired employees hailing from all over Central and South America. Its menu has expanded accordingly, featuring enticements such as Guatemalan champurradas (sesame-studded cookies) and bread pudding squares; fried Colombian corn flour empanadas with beef and potatoes; and Salvadoran pupusas.
The bestsellers, for good reason, are the filling and flavor-packed churrasco platters ($19.99). I’m partial to the churrasco Guatemalteco, which finds a grilled, 8-ounce steak accompanied by sliced avocado, refried beans, queso blanco, rice, pico de gallo and blistered scallions and jalapenos, plus two warm, griddled corn tortillas and a mixed green salad on the side. The equally generous churrasco Ecuatoriano steak platter is served with fried eggs, rice, fries, avocados, plantains and salad. The lovely lady with lavender hair who was my server, it turns out, was Eva Sejas herself. // Café Sazon, 4704 Columbia Pike, Arlington, 703-566-1686
Three Slices at Andy’s Pizza
What’s quick, delicious and a guaranteed crowd-pleaser? The easy answer is pizza—especially when it’s from Andy’s Pizza, a DMV chainlet that opened its first counter in Tysons Galleria in 2018, and in April debuted a new spot in Ballston/Virginia Square. “We call it New York-style, but it’s not really,” says owner and founder Andy Brown, who lives in Arlington. “New York pizza is cooked at 500 degrees for 10 minutes. Neapolitan is 900 degrees for 90 seconds. We bake ours at 700 for five minutes, on stone in a Baker’s Pride oven, so we have a bastard-style pizza.”
Whatever it is, it’s terrific. The dough for Brown’s thin, flavorful crust has a slight tang, courtesy of a three-day cold fermentation process, and his sauce is made purely with tomatoes and salt—nothing else. That combination of dough and sauce, plus whole milk mozzarella cheese from Wisconsin, won Brown the top prize at the International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas in 2021.
Andy’s offers eleven 18-inch whole pies ($22.50 to $32.50), five of them classics such as plain cheese, pepperoni, or sausage and pepper. The menu also touts six specialty pies, including a burrata Margherita (which can be made vegan with dairy-free cashew cheese) and a carnivore pizza for meat-lovers. All are available by the slice ($4.50-$6).
My perfect three-slice meal includes two classics (Margherita and mushroom and onion), plus a wedge of the house-favorite specialty topped with crispy cupped pepperoni, burrata, Mike’s hot honey and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. // Andy’s Pizza, 901 N. Pollard St. (entrance on Fairfax Drive), Arlington, 703-552-4037; 2001 International Drive, 3rd Floor Food Court, Tysons, 703-775-2212
Koshary and Foul at King of Koshary
For those of us who can’t decide which carb we love best, Egypt’s national dish, koshary, is a dream come true, and there’s no better place to grab it than King of Koshary, a congenial spot just west of Ballston. A piping hot bowl of this king of all comfort foods ($10) finds elbow macaroni, black lentils, chickpeas, rice and vermicelli topped with an abundance of crispy fried onions and a cumin-laced tomato sauce served on the side. Toss it all together and season it to your liking with dashes of shatta (hot sauce) and dakka (cumin and garlic vinaigrette) for a hearty marriage of textures and flavors.
Throw in an order of warm foul (fava bean hummus, $9) garnished with olive oil, cucumbers and tomatoes, plus two large rounds of warm pita bread for slathering, and you’ve got a perfect meal that may even be enough for two.
Open since 2019, King of Koshary seats 50 in a charming setting loaded with Egyptian bric-a-brac. Its namesake dish speaks to the restaurant’s origin story: Owners Ayob Metry and Nadia Gomaa met while working at the Whole Foods Market in Ashburn, where they competed over who made the better version of koshary. Soon a partnership and thriving business was born. Tip: Don’t miss their Om Ali, a rich, creamy, almost souffle-like dessert made with puff pastry, almonds, cashews, raisins and peanuts that’s brûléed on top. // King of Koshary, 5515 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, 571-317-7925
Buffalo Dog and Totchos at Haute Dogs
Sometimes a craving strikes that only a good old hot dog can satisfy. That’s when I head to Haute Dogs, a 35-seat gourmet hot dog joint in Arlington’s Williamsburg Shopping Center, where 15 versions of the beloved street snack go for $6.75 apiece. Chloé Swanson, who grew up in Arlington and co-founded the restaurant with her mother, Pamela Swanson, and stepfather, Lionel Holmes, is usually on hand to help narrow down the choices.
Made with dry-aged Black Angus beef and served on buttery griddled New-England-style split buns, the uncured franks (which, by the way, are gluten- and dairy-free) have that all-important snap that is a telltale sign of a top-notch hot dog.
My go-tos used to be the Chicago style (relish, tomato, onions, pickle spear, mustard, peppers, celery salt), the OBX (chili, coleslaw, yellow mustard) and the banh mi (cucumbers, carrots, cilantro, jalapenos and sriracha mayo). That was before Swanson turned me on to the Buffalo (blue cheese crumbles, chopped celery, ranch dressing and sriracha ) and the Plus the Dog (cheddar cheese, slaw, chopped onions and chipotle mayo).
An order of two franks comes in well below $20, as does a dog plus an order of totchos ($8.50)—tater tots topped with chili, salsa, cheese, jalapenos and lime cream. // Haute Dogs, 2910 N. Sycamore St., Arlington, 703-534-2510
Turkish Breakfast at Borek-G
It’s late morning on a weekday at Borek-G, a Turkish restaurant and market that opened days before the pandemic hit in 2020. I’m indulging in their lavish breakfast special, a panoply of snacks and condiments (olives, feta and cheddar cheeses, dried apricots, walnuts, tomatoes, cucumbers, honey, jam), plus warm pita bread, tea and scrambled eggs with sucuk, a fermented Turkish beef sausage.
Six women at the next table over are knitting and chatting, needles clacking. “They’ve been coming every Tuesday from 11 to 2 since we first opened,” says Huseyin Kaygusuz, who co-owns the family business with his mother, Dilek, and father, Erol. “We don’t charge them anything.”
The Kaygusuz family came to the U.S. from Istanbul in 2001 through the Diversity Visa Program, commonly referred to at the time as the green card lottery, when Huseyin was 6 years old. Erol landed a job in housekeeping at The Watergate, Dilek at a nail salon, and they began baking on the side. In 2008, Dilek started selling her dips and baked goods—including the filled, spiral shaped phyllo pastries called borek—at the Falls Church farmers market. Soon she had weekly stalls at multiple farmers markets, plus a catering operation.
Borek-G seats 20 inside and 20 outside, serving specialties such as sarma (grape leaves), biber dolmasi (stuffed peppers) and borek filled with spinach, cheese or ground beef, plus tempting trays of assorted baklavas. The green sarma baklava—phyllo and pistachios rolled into a log resembling a grape leaf—is divine. // Borek-G, 315 S. Maple Ave., Falls Church, 571-230-6821
Half-Chicken Platter at Charga Grill
There’s all kinds of reasonably priced deliciousness going on at Charga Grill on Langston Boulevard. The 30-seat eatery, which opened in 2019, specializes in American, Peruvian and South Asian street foods—particularly dishes reflecting the Pakistani heritage of its owners, Asad Chaudry and his uncle, chef Iqbal Chaudry.
Kebabs, curries, loaded sandwiches and wraps, and kickass chili momos (dumplings) are among the fare, but it’s really all about the chicken, which is not surprising given that charga means chicken in the Pashto language.
Charga offers the bird six ways, starting with its namesake Pakistani charga-style, for which skinless poultry is marinated in yogurt and South Asian spices, then steamed and flash-fried. The Pakistani sajji-style rotisserie chicken is skin-on, brined, marinated and spice-crusted. Other preparations include Peruvian-style rotisserie, fiery peri peri, tandoori and classic fried chicken. Quarter- or half-chicken combos ($12/$18) come with two sides and a drink. I like both Pakistani styles, but my advice is to go for the half combo with the tandoori and peri peri versions.
When it comes to sides, Charga has some of the best naan in the DMV (so thin and delicate!), not to mention the boldly flavored stewed okra and terrific chana (chickpeas) in a cumin- and coriander-laced gravy. “Chana is the most popular side dish,” says Iqbal. “We go through 150 pounds of dried chana every week.” He also turns 45 gallons of milk per week into homemade yogurt.
Business here has been booming ever since The Washington Post named it the number one casual restaurant in the DMV in 2022. Sister restaurant Charga on the Pike (as in Columbia) opened in September. // Charga Grill, 5151 Langston Blvd., Arlington, 703-988-6063
David Hagedorn is the dining critic for Arlington Magazine and Bethesda Magazine.