Looking for casual, inexpensive, HEALTHY food in DC

Here are some of my favorite DC restaurants. All the restaurents listed here are casual. You could eat at any of them for $10-20 per person for dinner, which by Washington standards is pretty cheap. Although not exclusively vegetarian, all have healthful choices on their menus, none are "meat and potatoes" style restaurants.

Connecticut Ave./Dupont Circle:
Take the "Dupont Circle" Metro Station.

Food For Thought (Near the intersection of Conn. and Fla. Ave.) Coffee-house style restaurent with healthful food and a relaxed atmosphere. Not expensive.

Kramerbooks and Afterwords Cafe (Conn. near Dupont Circle) Bookstore with restaurent, nice atmosphere, good desserts. Open late, I think 24hrs during the weekend. Slightly overpriced (entries up to 11-13$) but the food is good.

Cafe Petito (Slightly down the street from Food for Thought) Reasonably priced Italian. The pizza is great. Antipasto buffet.

China Cafe III (Conn. Ave.)
Better than average fast food Chinese. Eat in or take out. Cheap.

Adams Morgan/Woodley Park:
There are many restaurants in these two areas, in all price ranges. You can take the Woodley Park Metro station (one stop north of Dupont Circle) and you will be on Connecticut Ave. This is the Woodley Park area. There are several Indian and Thai restaurants here, all of which are pretty good. To get to Adams Morgan, take Calvert Street and walk across the Duke Ellington Bridge. Continue on Calvert, passing a row of houses, till you get to the intersection with the gas station. Bear to the right, and you will come to the intersection of 18th St. and Columbia Road. This is the main intersection of Adams Morgan, and most of the restaurants are on these two streets.

Lousiana Express (on Columbia, near the intersection) Cajun cooking. Informal atmosphere. Reasonable prices. The best egg dishes I've had anywhere, served all day. The Eggs Creole are great. The other dishes I don't know about; the eggs are so good there is never any temptation to try anything else.

Avignon Freres (Columbia, across from Lousiana Express) Nothing distinctive about this restaurant, except that they serve good food at reasonable prices.

So's Your Mom Deli (Columbia, opposite side of 18th) A great deli, take out only.

The Red Sea (18th)
Ethopian Cuisine. Casual. Cheap. Ethiopian cuisine consists of stewy, spicy food eaten with a flat, dense bread. If you're adventurous, and like Indian and Middle Eastern food, try it.

Fish Wings and Tings (18th)
Small cafe with Carribean food. Casual. Fresh fish and chicken in Carribean sauces. Many kinds of spicy chicken wings (example: ginger and curry wings) Incredibly good fruit beverages to drink.

I Matti (18th)
Quite good Italian.

Kalorama Cafe (18th and Kalorama)
Serves healthful food in a casual atmosphere. I've never eaten here, but I hear it's good.

El Tamarindo (off 18th, near U St. and Wyoming?)
Great, cheap, casual Mexican/Salvaorean(?) restaurant.

Although not really within walking distance of the others, Julio's Pizza (at the intersection of U, 16th and New Hampshire Ave.) has great pizza and reasonable prices, in a nice atmosphere.

Another place you might want to visit is Union Station (use Union Station Metro.) This is DC's grand train station, which has been stunningly restored. Many new restaurants and shops have opened. Many people come here just to eat and shop. A very good food court is in the lower level. A set of mall-style shops are on the levels above. In addition, the main area has many sit down restaurants, such as Uno Pizzeria (a pretty good pizza chain), America (mid-priced, nicely decorated restaurent), Sfuzzi (stunning decor, good mid-upper priced Italian.) A great nine-screen cinima is on the bottom level as well. Each of the nine theatres has its own decor.

Another good bet is one of the American Cafe restaurents which are all over the city. These restaurants combine fresh food, slightly adventurous menus, and nice decor with reasonable prices. The desserts are especially good. The one in Georgetown (Wisconsin, near M St) is open pretty late as well.

Pie de Cochan, on Wisconson in Georgetown, is cheap and open 24hrs (at least on weekends)

If you do happen to have a junk food attack, Hamburger Hamlet, on M St. in Georgetown, has great hamburgers and other naughty foods. Reasonably priced.

Washington has many restaurants, so this is only a partial listing. The neighborhoods with the most restaurants are Georgetown, Dupont Circle, and Adams Morgan. Also, it's recommended that you take Metro, taxi, or walk to any destination in the city. It's very hard to find things by driving if you don't know the city, and parking can be extremely difficult. Metro, on the other hand, is safe, clean, cheap, and it's usually pretty easy to find something from a Metro stop. Metro stations in the outer suburbs have large amounts of parking. Taxis are also plentiful within the city as well, however the fare system is zone-based, and confusing. You also don't want to take a cab across state lines, (ie. VA-DC, DC-MD, VA-MD) because the fare computation is even more confusing.

Hope this helps.

Andy Brown
Software Engineer
MAYA Design Group
Pittsburgh PA.
412-488-2900

Mary M. wrote:
>

>friends.  None of us are from the area and so I'm looking for
>recommendations on places to eat.  We are going down to compete
>in a sporting event, and some of us don't have much in the way
>of bucks, so we're looking for places that serve healthy food,
>don't charge lots of bucks, and aren't going to freak out at
>the sight of a sweatshirt.
>

By "healthy," just what do you mean?  Organic/fruitarian?  Just not Frenchola?  Or what?

Also, it's a BIG area.  Where are you staying?  In DC itself?  Virginia? Some part of MD?  Which part?

>in DC.  I tried to retrieve them but they were gone from the server,
>and anyway I think most of them were for the kind of places that
>serve everything in a veloute sauce and charge 50 bucks for it
>and where the favorite phrase is, "I SUGGEST you put on a TIE."  :-)

There are tons of good Viet and Thai places, and some good Chinese.  For that matter, even the French places don't serve much veloute'...8-)

At 1645 Wisconsin Ave., upper part of Georgetown, is a fine Iranian eatery, Kolbeh.  Another one across the street and down the block.

Stop off at the Union Station Metro stop and explore the food hall down in the basement of the station.  The take-out Indian place there is veggie and quite nice.

Roger