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The Tara Thai Restaurant offers Thai cuisine at 4849 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20016. The restaurant is open for lunch and dinner. It closes at 10 PM from Sunday through Thursday, and it stays open until 11 PM on Friday and Saturday.
Tara Thai seems to be a franchise with restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, DC. Each restaurant has its own menu with some dishes that are common to most of the restaurants. The Tara Thai restaurant in Washington, DC has a sushi bar; this makes it more like a Thai/Japanese restaurant rather than just Thai.
The Tara Thai restaurant in Washington, DC is located in a small shopping center with a CVS drug store and a small fresh food market. The restaurant has a family atmosphere, and on a Friday evening you can find several families with children.
I ordered a Thai Garden Roll as an appetizer which was supposed to be grilled chicken salad wrapped in rice paper with green leaf lettuce, carrot and bean sprouts, served with spicy roasted peanut dipping sauce. I was disappointed to find out that they had already run out although I was there for an early supper at around 6:30 on a Friday. My second choice, the Prawn Rolls consisting of shrimp in wonton skin, seaweed and sushi rice, deep fried and served with wasabi ginger soy sauce was also not available. This is why I ended up getting the Fried Calamari appetizer. The calamari are served on a bed of lettuce with shredded carrots and cabbage and a mildly sweet-spicy sauce.
The Green Curry has bamboo shoots, Thai eggplant and basil with your choice of chicken, beef, pork or seafood. It is served with a side dish of steamed rice.
The Ginger Perfect consists of chicken, beef, pork or seafood sautéed with fresh ginger, onion and hu-nu mushrooms in a bean sauce. This is also served with a side dish of rice. Of the three main dishes that we ordered, this was the tastiest.
Pad Thai is a traditional noodle dish. Thin rice noodles are stir-fried with shrimp or chicken, bean curd, crushed peanuts, bean sprouts, scallions and egg. The flavor of this Pad Thai was good, but the noodles were somewhat mushy as if they had been held in water too long.
Tara Thai offers a large sushi and sashimi platter with soup and salad for $26 dollars.
Call the Tara Thai restaurant at 202-363-4141. Find more information about the restaurant at its web site: www.tarathai.com/
