Just off a quiet corner of Wisconsin Avenue sits Masala Street Eatery, a restaurant serving Indian street food in the middle of one of D.C.’s busiest neighborhoods.
Masala Street Eatery, which opened in 2023, brings the bold flavors of Indian street food to a surprisingly small storefront and a low-key online presence. After seeing colorful signs outside advertising the different Indian foods I could try — like samosas, momos and biryani — I expected an equally colorful and extravagant interior, but the establishment shifted from bright signage to a meek dining room boasting only four tables once I walked in the door.
Masala Street Eatery is open in the evening from 4 to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, and from noon to 11 p.m. on the weekends. The restaurant’s menu offers a flurry of curries, biryani and other Indian food, also featuring daily specials with lower prices every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
I was stumped on what to order after peeking at the menu before my trek to the corner of O Street and Wisconsin Avenue — I wanted to try a little bit of everything — but the Tuesday special ($16), offering Tikka Masala with naan and a drink, felt like a steal.
Upon my arrival on Tuesday past 5 p.m., the dining room was empty, with the only other person inside being an employee, serving the roles of host, chef and server. I was greeted by a few posters showing drawings and pictures of Indian food, like the tikka masala I was about to order, and a television in a corner of the dining room shuffling through Indian music videos. Beyond the posters, the dining room was plain, lacking much color beyond what could best be described as millennial gray.
Ordering was simple enough, with a straight path from the door up to the counter, where I was greeted by the combination host-chef-server. After paying, he gestured for me to sit anywhere I’d like in the restaurant, cueing me to sit down at a table in a corner near the counter I had just ordered from.
The employee placed a tray with a to-go box containing my steaming tikka masala and aluminum foil-wrapped naan in front of me a short 10 minutes later, after the sounds and smells of the restaurant employee preparing my dinner wafted from the nearby kitchen. Inside the box awaited equal parts tikka masala and rice, and it didn’t take long for me to begin digging into the dish.
My dinner’s humble presentation could not have been further from the explosion of flavor that treated my taste buds to a new culinary world after almost a month of eating a bland rotation of dining hall food. The tikka masala was creamy, serving not just a role as the main dish but also as a makeshift topping for both the rice and naan that came with my meal. The orange-red hue of the sauce clued me into the dish’s tomato base, the tomato blended in with the rich spices to make something similar to a marinara sauce, except with a whole different host of spices.
After uncovering the naan from the foil, it was hot to the touch with char spots on the outside and soft on the inside with each bite.
My one critique is that even though I agreed to “medium spice,” I found the dish to be a little too mild and would have preferred the spice level be kicked up a notch. Despite this, I was still impressed by the earthy, rich tomato and garlic flavors, leaving me satisfied upon walking back to campus.
Masala Street Eatery’s tikka masala adds an extra level of comforting warmth as D.C. begins to thaw from record-setting bouts of below-freezing weather. To the Georgetown weekend shopper, this tiny gem is only a stone’s throw from some of the District’s most picturesque stores and well worth the visit.
