Chicken and Rice

More I order from this place the more I appreciate it. For everyone who gets delivery and hasn’t been inside to watch them cook, please know that this is the real deal. Cooked to order. Fresh ingredients. Nothing is pre prepared or frozen. Not a microwave or warming tray in sight. Yes it’s a hole in the wall but this is some of the best Indian food dollar for dollar in dc. Okra, paneer, naan and butter chicken all outstanding.

I have smelled like cooking oil for about half of the day… but it was so worth it.
Chicken and Rice is a no frills, hole-​in-​the-​wall restaurant serving homestyle Indian food in the middle of an H Street shopping center.
As other Unilocalers have noted, there is no air conditioning here so a thin layer of oil kind of sits on everything but if you are coming here… it’s not for the atmosphere.
The boy and I stopped in after a trip to the National Arboretum and were starving like Marvin. I was sad to see that the credit card machine was down and I had exactly $ 24 in cash. We ended up getting the chef’s special, chicken curry for $ 6.99, a chicken tikka masala for $ 11.99 and an order of garlic naan for $ 2.99. Then we went to the McDonald’s next door to buy bottled water with our credit cards.
The food was ready in about ten minutes and it was cooked to order. The chicken curry was tender, a tiny bit spicy, with lots of potatoes (I know some people have complained about this, but to me potatoes and curry are one of the world’s most perfect combinations). The chicken tikka masala was good too but it was not the best I had. As Ruth lamented, skip the naan and soak up all the sauce with the rice instead.
I’d definitely come back for their grilled red snapper and other recommended dishes.

With a name like «Chicken and Rice,» somehow I was expecting a slightly trendy Indian joint on rapidly-​gentrifying H St. This place couldn’t have been farther from that. Let’s start with atmosphere: you really feel like you’re in Mumbai with the dingy interior, no A/​C, and an out-​of-​order bathroom. On a pleasant day, it was far too hot to eat inside; I can only imagine how steamy it would have been on a muggy summer day. I had the chicken curry and rice lunch special, which came to $ 7.69 with tax. The portion was an okay size, but there were a good amount of potatoes in the curry, so that cut down on the amount of chicken. The rice was okay, but the Styrofoam (or something else) left a weird aftertaste to the food. Maybe I ordered the wrong thing, but I wasn’t impressed. Also, their credit card machine is down, so it’s cash-​only.

Spent $ 80 ordering delivery. Food arrived 1 hour 30 min post ordering.
Ordered:
Buttered Chicken
Tandoori Fish
alu Golbi and a few others.
The food was good — some of the better Indian food in DC. The portion sizes were LAUGHABLE. The large sizes are the size of every other restaurant’s ‘small’ (the plastic tupperware container in the smallest size). For $ 12, I would have expected something at least shareable with one person. The Tandoori fish at $ 15 fit easily into one styrofoam container and was 5’75in long (not making this up). It was the smallest whole fish i’ve ever seen, full of bones, dry, and a bit over cooked (maybe due to the 45min delivery window taking 90+) We received TWO massive styrofoam containers of rice which were all of the weight in the delivery bag (we were excited prior to opening).
The food was good, just expected to be able to feed more than 2 people for $ 80 and definitely the smallest delivery portion sizes of ANY restaurant i’ve ordered from in the city (and i’ve lived here for 15+ years in different sections).
In short, go eat in, but be wary of delivery.

The other night was rainy and gross, so we decided to get delivery of some good spicy Indian food. This place, a new spot for us, did not disappoint.
1) You get to choose your spice level for everything. Even the samosas. Amazing.
2) The food was well cooked, amazingly spiced, and made with quality ingredients. Possibly the best Indian food I’ve ever had at this price point.
3) The very hot is not for the faint of heart.
3) The samosas, chicken vindalu, and chicken dhansak were fantastic and I would highly recommend. The garlic naan wasn’t the greatest as the garlic was a bit raw and just put on top of the bread, so next time I think I’ll just order the regular naan as the bread itself was good, just not the raw garlic.
I can’t speak for the ambiance of the place since we had the food delivered. But for at-​home eating, this was amazing. The only downside was the food was a bit cool (not cold, but not hot) once delivered. Otherwise, fantastic!

I think I might be partial to this place for two reasons:
1-It’s cheap.
2-​on the night I went it was staffed by three adorable older grandfather types who all looked like different variations of my dad. I really felt like I was in someone’s home waiting for a home cooked meal and watching them scurry about making everything literally from scratch. They’ll even approach you later and ask if everything was ok.
One reviewer nailed it by saying this place is good for what it is. Fast, cheap Indian food with big portions. There is no A/​C, not much seating, and you’re not getting silverware and cloth napkins.
I started with vegetarian samosas, which were freshly fried, filled with a chunky, well-​spiced potato and pea filling, and excellent. I have tried chicken tikka and the butter chicken. Both were good and flavorful to me. The saag paneer was fairly good. When I have been here I am usually in a rush so I have not managed to try their curry fish. The gentlemen up front will warn you that the curry and tandoori fish dishes take an extra twenty to thirty minutes.
As a warning the naan is unforgivably bad, Ruth C is correct in comparing it to cardboard. Not sure what went wrong there.
All in all, it was an enjoyable meal each time I have been there. This is one of the many H street businesses that I hope will thrive.

So far this is the best indian food I’ve had in DC. Saag paneer is great. HOWEVER, this place should be two dollar signs, not one. Unless you get simple chicken curry and rice ($ 6.99), all of the other entrees will run you $ 9+ dollars. Chicken tikka masala was $ 12. But it’s so good.
Don’t expect good service or a mind blowing ambiance! They just offer REALLY YUMMY FOOD here.

this is definitely a no frills place… it’s cafeteria style and if you get there at 8:40 pm (when they close at 9pm), prepare to get kicked out as soon as they hand you your bag.
yet their food was SO DELICIOUS i didn’t care! i tried my friend’s palak paneer and ordered paneer makhani myself. hands down the best indian food i’ve had in DC and in years! i would give this 2 dollar signs instead of 1 though — if you order anything other than the chicken curry special, expect to pay $ 10 – 11 per entrée excluding naan.

Basic cafeteria layout without means of air circulation, no bathroom available to customers. No problems with service, they even warned us when a menu item we considered would take longer to make than normal.
The saucy entrees we tried were all good, with the chicken dhansak impressing slightly more than the chicken tikka masala. Even the saag paneer had the right spinach consistency for me. Samosas are vegetable only, and sizable enough that they’re worth sharing… fair balance of crunchy shell and a somewhat seasoned filling dominated by potatoes and lentils. However, I have to round down my rating because I’ve never had such terrible naan. Both the regular and keema naans had the consistency of cardboard. How did adding meat to the latter not save it? Guess I should’ve listened to the business name and stuck to the rice, which was far less offensive.

I was between 3 and 4 stars but, all things considered, I’m going with 4. I really think you have to take the location into account (everything around here is a bit of a hole-​in-​the-​wall, because hey supposedly it’s an up-​and-​coming neighborhood) and adjust your expectations accordingly.
Having said that, it’s a good deal for a quick meal when you’re in that part of town. I don’t eat meat, so I can’t speak to the chicken part of Chicken and Rice, but the veg samosas were a tasty appetizer, and the paneer and garlic naan filled me right up.
TL;DR: Not Langley Park Indian food tasty: D but as someone who constantly craves Indian food and has a cache of secret spots around the city, I’ll be back.

Solid Indian food. It always seems pricey whenever we place our delivery order, but then it arrives and we remember why it’s so worth it to order from here when we want delivery.
When it comes to take out orders though, this place has been displaced by the Indian place in the basement of Union Station, which is just as good for ¹⁄₃ the price.

Honestly, I was a bit shocked to realize this place is good. Like, really good.
I had walked past the place many times without giving it a thought other than «wow, what a bad name,» but when I read a few really good reviews, I decided to give it a try. It helps that it’s just a few hundred feet from my house; it hurts that it’s stuck between the Game Stop and other ratty stores in a sad strip mall. I also am guilty of turning my nose up at places that advertise with unappealing photos of food, which they unfortunately do, but I am glad I didn’t let that stop me from going in.
The samosas were good (and huge!), but admittedly not quite as good as the ones my Indian roommate used to make. However, the chicken Madraj was delicious. It’s tomato based but has a great kick to it. The garlic naan was delicious. I think the total was $ 18 for all of that, and it was much, much more than I could ever eat in a sitting and ultimately more than I could finish in two sittings. They have very generous portions.
The place is definitely a hole-​in-​the-​wall and I think I’ll probably stick to ordering it as take-​out, but it was clean inside.
Everything was made fresh to order, but as I was the only one in there, it was ready very quickly.
And despite some others speaking of terrible customer service, I sound them to be very friendly and talkative. I could tell that a few of the guys behind the counter spoke limited English, so I guess that depending on the day and who is working, you may have a different experience than I did. However, I found them charming and the food delicious, so I’ll be back.

I love the food at Chicken and Rice and think it stacks up well against any other Indian/​Pakistani/​Bangladeshi restaurant in the District… but their service is beyond atrocious. You cannot continue to have some of the worst customer service anywhere and expect to survive.
Despite the food, not having to deal with their incompetent staff makes never going back to this establishment an easy decision. The process of ordering what you want (whether over the phone or in person) should not be as big an ordeal as it is here. The guy who takes the orders is usually three steps behind, and talks at a murmur in very broken English. I speak his native tongue, and even then he doesn’t get the words coming out of my mouth half the time.
The customer service here blows. Deuces pendejos, I’m out.

Reading a few trusted Unilocaler’s reviews (Shachi, Venu, and Justin) had me all excited about trying out Chick and Rice. I was not disappointed.
The samosas are fist sized and I don’t have the daintiest hands so that means that they are huge. Inside this crispy outer shell is a curried veggie delight. I may or may not have snuck back here two days in a row just to grab one.
We had the chicken tikka, butter chicken, tandoori shrimp and chicken saag. Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum. At this point I’m just echoing the other reviews so I don’t need to give you overly detailed reviews of each dish.
I have not had a bad dish here but in a recent order they did downsize the shrimp in the tandoori shrimp platter. I am hoping that this was a temporary change as it is one of my favorites but not when they are so small.
As long as I am a novice cooker of Indian food or just plain old lazy and in need of a good, quick bite I will keep coming back to Chicken and Rice.

It’s really good for what it is. What I mean by that is that it isn’t Rasika or one of the spots in Langley Park so if you’re expecting that, keep moving. But the food is fresh and flavorful and the owners are incredibly nice. We ordered the tandoori fish (delicious, but on the small side), saag paneer (the spinach was fantastic! In fact, much better than Rasika’s. HOWEVER, it seems that they used something more like mozzarella instead of actual paneer. It was melted and super gooey. Which would have been perfect had I ordered a pizza. But in spinach, not so much). We also got the shrimp curry, potatoes with chickpeas and naan. The shrimp curry was good but it was made with what appeared to be (and frankly, tasted like), frozen tail on shrimp. Not good. Everything else was good.
So, that’s what I mean. Was it spectacular? No. But will I go again? Absolutely!

It is said that Bengalies know two dishes; fish and rice and rice and fish. So it is not a surprise that one of the best fare offered here is their curry fish. But that is not to say that is their sole excellence. The beef curry is pretty good as is their samosa. And their muglai fares are tasty too. All those fares are offered at bargain prices. The establishment may be spartan but that doesn’t apply to their seasoning or fares.

We ordered take out from Chicken and Rice last night and were pleasantly surprised. We thought it was extremely good and the quality was a great value for the price. Also, it is much better than the local delivery competition. The saag paneer was outstanding and I loved that it wasn’t pureed. The chicken tikka masala was quite good with just the right amount of heat. My husband loved the alu chobi but I thought it could have used a bit more flavor. The texture was great though and I appreciated that none of the dishes were oily (something I’ve experienced with some other local Indian delivery places).
The people working there were extremely nice and polite. We called in our order and it was ready less for pick up within 10 minutes (they deliver but we live less than a block away). The price was great, coming in at $ 32 total for two veggie dishes and the chicken. The food was enough to feed two adults and a toddler and leave enough leftovers for both adults to take it to lunch the next day. The leftovers held up well and were quite good reheated.
I was shocked to see such mixed reviews. We definitely felt that the dishes were consistently good and better than the local competition delivery. We will be excited to go back and try the other dishes and they will definitely go into the rotation! The shopping center is a weird place for them, so I really hope they make it!

I will happily defer to my Indian dining companions (Venu, Shachi, and Danesh), and my girlfriend Suzy, who’s obsessed enough with Indian food to be an expert herself, when it comes to distinguishing the differences between Bengali dishes and the rest of the country’s cuisine. But, I can tell you that whatever the origin, I enjoyed our meal here at Chicken and Rice quite thoroughly, and when you consider how much food we wound up eating at a mere $ 16 per person (including tax and tip), I would certainly recommend it to anyone who’s a fan of Indian dishes in general.
This might not exactly be destination dining for folks in the general DC area, but if you live anywhere nearby you should definitely mix it into your regular rotation (and if you’re within a 2 mile radius they deliver as well!). It’s relatively new, but didn’t receive all the fanfare and press as many of H Street’s other new establishments, partly because it’s in the somewhat dead-​zone that exists around the 8^th St strip mall, and also because these guys are a pretty basic, straightforward operation. They don’t have a PR firm, they’ve just got people make damn good food. We, the eaters, are their PR. There aren’t many instances where I would advise people to ignore the complaints that other visitors might have, but here they all seem extremely petty and pedantic. The only one I would genuinely acknowledge as a potential customer issue is the language barrier, but thankfully Danesh was there to assist me in ordering. I can see this causing some difficulty if you were ordering over the phone, but they also offer online ordering which should reduce the confusion.
Our party of seven began with four orders of samosas (2 samosas per order), which were easily some of the largest I’ve ever seen. They had a rather perfectly golden fry to them and were thankfully not searing hot inside. The price per quantity ratio on these is pretty outstanding. After a short wait the rest of the food items began to steadily make their way to the table, with our Tandoori fish being presented on a plate, but everything else in little takeout containers. It’s pretty clear this establishment doesn’t encounter a lot of dine-​in business, but this isn’t the type of place you come for ambiance either, so I wouldn’t deduct them for that.
One of the unanimous highlights of the meal was the saag dish featuring spinach and potatoes. The spinach had a wonderful creamy, almost whipped texture to it, with a really great flavor balance… none of that toxic neon green looking stuff you get in some other places. The bhindi (okra) was the more disappointing of the vegetable items, as I just found it to be far too oily and without much additional flavor or seasoning. Okra is one of my favorite foods of any type, especially some of the other Indian variations I’ve had, so this was the biggest detractor for me.
The meat dishes were for the most part all pretty good, with a few being real standouts. My favorite of the bunch was our Tandoori fish, although a bit small and somewhat difficult to tackle with plastic utensils it offered up some outstanding spice notes and requisite tenderness. This makes me really excited at the prospect of some of the other fish items on the menu we spotted after ordering. The beef curry is a solid option as well, if a bit unexpected in terms of curry flavors I was expecting. Here is where I defer to the expertise of my friends, who are more familiar with this region’s slightly different flavors. We didn’t ask for our dishes to be made with any additional level of heat, but when ordering a brown curry dish with four Indians in my party I wouldn’t have expected that to be necessary… lesson learned for next time. The chicken dishes offered the starkest contrasts in flavors, with the chicken madraj being a real hit, and the chicken korma somewhat of a flop. The madraj is supposedly South Indian, but was a totally new item for all of us, even those from South India. It was easily the spiciest dish of the evening (although definitely not too hot for the casual Indian fan), and subsequently one of my two favorites. The korma, by comparison, was forgettable, but that’s also not a dish I would normally recommend people ordering unless a place happens to specialize in it. It’s sort of the Indian version of a burger… everywhere will offer it to suit the average diner, but few places will make it memorable.

This place is a welcome addition to H Street. To compare it to another establishment, I’d say this place is to Indian takeout what Afghan Kabob House is to takeout kabobs (though Chicken and Rice also makes kabobs). Basically they have the staples of Indian takeout, but execute them better.
We started with the vegetable samosas. They were large and freshly fried. The filling was excellent and the outside was crispy. Nothing bad to say about them. If you get them later in the day, they may be re-​fried instead, but I’m sure they are almost as good.
For the entrée, I had the beef curry, which as other mentioned their reviews was excellent. It was think and rich with an array of spices. I would agree with some others that it was a bit salty, but not so much that it was unenjoyable. I actually did not even notice the salt until toward the end of the meal when I was getting full and the curry had cooled down a lot.
My wife had the tandoori fish. You get an entire snapper cooked perfectly, with rice and vegetables. I thought their tandoori masala gave great flavor to and my wife was very happy.
We will definitely be returning to this place. The food is top knotch for take out cuisine. The only negatives besides the salt thing are the prices. Far from overpriced, this place is just beyond the level I could justify going here regularly. The curry dish was $ 12 and the fish was $ 15. I think if I want to keep going back, I’ll sample their vegetarian menu for a while since those are all under $ 10.

Danesh? Venu? Is there room on that bandwagon for one more? If so, lemme on!
4.5 stars, fo sho.
This place is a wonderful addition to H St. We have been severely lacking in tasty, home style Indian food (sorry Cusbah) for quite some time. I ordered 2 dishes: the saag aloo (spinach and potato) and navaratan korma (mixed vegetable curry). Both were excellent. And less than $ 20 combined too! You get rice with your dish which was tasty, but I had homemade bread (chapati) at home, so I opted for that.
The korma was creamy and intricately spiced — you can tell they spent time blooming their spices in oil before adding the layers of curry to it. The vegetables were fresh and ample. If you are sensitive to spice, order the mild though I opted for «medium» spiced and was pleased with the heat level.
The saag was awesome too — it’s not that ridiculously pureed spinach crap that just about every other Indian restaurant in the area serves. This is clearly fresh spinach in a light curry with potatoes.
The service is so friendly too! I am definitely going to be a regular and can say this place will fill the void when I’m homesick for mom’s (awesome) cooking.
For those complaining about the ambiance, get over it. I tip my hat to the fact that they didn’t spend a dime on the décor and instead put it into quality, home style Desi food.
Come here! I PROMISE you won’t be disappointed!