The Halal Guys - Middle Eastern Fast-Casual food in Springfield, VA

6304 Springfield Blvd

Springfield, VA 22150
Tel: (571) 282-3444

A true American success story - The Halal Guys - a mid-town Manhattan hot dog cart launched by three Egyptian immigrants in 1990 is now a successful franchise with 30+ locations, many of which are brick and mortar around the country, as well as Canada and Asia. Three of these have kicked off in Northern Virginia (Springfield and Vienna are now open, Fairfax coming soon).  

Each opening of The Halal Guys' locations is celebrated by hundreds of eager eaters waiting in long lines around the corner to be the first to get in. The food is basic Middle Eastern fare in a fast-casual setting with an assembly line of smiling servers compiling your choice of protein, starch and veggies. 

The idea is simple, wonderful and efficient. Once-upon-a-decade, it was pioneered by McDonald's: a limited basic menu that appeals to the entire multi-generational family. Our readers will recall that Northern Virginia was home to the original Five Guys, which built on that very idea and has become a national success. Incidentally, The Halal Guys are in good hands. They have tapped into the expertise of the same franchising company Fransmart that helped spur Five Guys' expansion.

The efficiency of this approach cannot be understated. You can see The Halal Guys food cart in action in this YouTube link. While New Yorkers always appreciate the direct communication and speedy pace of service without sacrificing quality, the simplicity of the limited choice and assembly line compilation clearly lends itself to pushing the frontiers of all ethnic cuisines and offering fast and good food across the country. Teriyaki Madness launched the first Northern Virginia location recently with fast-casual Asian food, and there are many more examples.

This recent Bloomberg article points out the rapid rise of the Halal market in the U.S., making it a $20 billion industry in 2016, up by one-third since 2010.  But in the spirit of catering to the North American market, the typical Middle Eastern meat staple - lamb - has been taken off The Halal Guys' menu, focusing instead on the more popular North American meats - chicken and beef.

The Halal Guys' mid-town Manhattan food truck actually has its own website 53rd and 6th. After running highly successful food trucks in New York for over 15 years, they decided to open up their first storefront. You can see the YouTube video here posted by Sameer's Eats about the first brick and mortar location on 14th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan in the neighborhood of my alma mater New York University. One of the main menu additions with the opening of the storefront was a variety of vegetarian options.  

The halal aspect of the food is what got the business started nearly 26 years ago in New York City. The objective was to fill a then-void of catering to the Muslim cab drivers who wanted to grab a meal on the go. It is the wide appeal and popularity of The Halal Guys' food that clearly transcends ethnic boundaries today.  

 Springfield, VA location in a local strip mall

 Ready to serve up

 Servers compiling a fresh Shwarma platter

 Entertainment built in - you can watch the cooks cut up the Shwarma behind the serving counter

 Decor takes you back to The Halal Guys' original digs in NYC

 French Fries

 While sitting at the counter, you can see photos of the original The Halal Guys NYC street cart, where it all began almost 26 years ago

 Hummus, Babaghanouj and Fresh Pita

 Chicken Shwarma Platter with The Halal Guys' White Sauce, which is a house recipe

 The Halal Guys' signature sauces - very very HOT sauce and a mild White sauce

 Crispy falafel

Delicious Baklava

ABC Canteen - Fish & Chips, Tacos, Wings in Fairfax, VA - CLOSED

VERY SAD TO REPORT THAT THIS RESTAURANT CLOSED.

9528 Lee Highway
Fairfax, VA 22031
Tel: (703) 865-0377

When someone with 20 years of experience in the restaurant business opens a restaurant with someone whose delicious family recipes were passed down from her Mexican grandmother, only wonderful things can happen. This is the story of the Northern Virginia newcomer ABC Canteen in Fairfax.

The menu is surprisingly eclectic. It's comfort food with a Mexican flare.  You can order Fish and Chips with a couple Tamales on the side or some Tacos with Cod Croquettes or for some ultimate comfort food, treat yourself to Chicken Wings and Mac and Cheese.

Why this unique selection? Wesley Chen immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 8 and fell in love with Mexican food almost immediately. He has worked his way up in several well-known restaurant chains, both casual fast-food and upscale. Along the way, he met Violeta Vergara, who not only shared his passion for Mexican food, but also wanted to share with the world her grandmother's recipes from Oaxaca. It was the perfect partnership that spun off on its own. Adding to their team one more colleague, whom they've known for over 15 years, ABC Canteen was born in early 2015.

Building off their love of comfort food, Chen and Vergara composed a menu that reflects their gastronomic passions. This is why everything they serve is... wait for it... made from scratch! Even the tartar sauce and... get this... the Chili powder!  Only the desserts at ABC Canteen are commercially made, and personally selected by Chen to be placed on the menu.

You really have to love your food to invest so much effort in preparing it just right for your customers. And it shows. On a Saturday afternoon, just after the Blizzard of 2016, the parking lot in front of the restaurant was not fully plowed, but ABC Canteen had a steady stream of customers. Chen personally welcomed many of them by name, particularly those who over the last 10 months since the restaurant opened have become "regulars," whether eating in or taking out.

The fresh, flavorful food is easily a draw on its own. Every item on the menu seems to be popular. But the added bonus is Chen's engaging, though non-imposing, spirit that fills the restaurant with a welcoming cheerfulness making you feel right at home.

The cod prepared at ABC Canteen reminded us of our time in Reykjavik, Iceland some years back, where we had a chance to taste some of the world-acclaimed cod recipes of Icelandic chefs. Chen's Fish and Chips are not at all inferior to those. The main difference was that in Iceland the cod was plucked fresh from the icy waters only a few feet away.  ABC Canteen's flaky cod in a crispy light batter was equally delicious. It went great with a side of their home-made tartar sauce and a full plate of crispy fries. We ordered an additional side of the golden brown hush puppies, which were nicely seasoned, just a tad sweet and overall flavorful.

Tamales and Tacos were terrific on their own, though a short trip to the Taco Bar provided options like diced radishes, onions, pico de gallo and jalapenos, and a variety of sauces.

The chicken wings come either in honey barbeque or buffalo sauce. We opted for the honey barbeque with a side of chunky blue cheese dressing.

This was the first time we ever had a Horchata, which is a cold sweet rice milk- based drink, made from scratch, of course, with a hint of cinnamon.

The Pan Tres Leches (Tres Leches Cake) was a great ending to our meal with its light fluffy texture and sweet condensed milk.

Residing in a building that was once an Arthur Treacher’s Fish and Chips, the restaurant's decor is simple, definitely not shabby and not overdone. It complements, does not distract.  The dining area is open, clean and bright with floor-to-ceiling windows, overall unpretentious and appealing.

We will definitely be back, and will bring friends. Especially on Taco Tuesdays!

ABC Canteen is in a small strip with Hailey's 24-hr laundromat 

and Mary's Pollo a la Brasa restaurant

 Great deal!!!

 Chen taking our order

 Taco Bar with a selection of toppings and sauces

 Our Feast

 Fish and Chips with Tartar Sauce

 Tamale

 Chicken Taco

 Honey Barbeque Chicken Wings with Blue Cheese dressing

 Hush Puppies

 Horchata drink

 Full dining room with Chen chatting with one of his customers

 Pan Tres Leches

BonChon Chicken - Korean fast food in Annandale, VA

7215 Columbia Pike
Annandale, VA 22003
Tel:(703) 914-1415

The first time we tried BonChon Chicken Wings was at the Northern Virginia Magazine's Chicken Wings NoVa Wars.  They were so flavorful, so perfectly baked and the spicy wings were way out of this world terrific, that we just had to follow our taste buds to their Annandale location.

BonChon is a modern Korean fast food joint with several large TVs and a full bar in the heart of Korea Town in Annandale.  Its staff is all young Koreans, though our waiter seemed to be so brand spanking new, our service was quite underwhelming. The bright spot in the service area was a server named Israel, who not only served most of our food, but also refilled our water and asked if everything was ok.  Kudos to Israel!

Though their website seems to be down for quite a while now, one of the nice things that BonChon offers is a calorie count of all its dishes, including wings. The wings are not cheap; they are about average at $1.30 per wing, regardless whether you get a mix of wings and drumsticks, drumsticks only or boneless strips. We got the ones were remembered as being fantastic - Soy Garlic and Spicy. Definitely worth the visit!

Looking around, most everyone in the restaurant was feasting on piles and piles of wings. Needless to say, come here for the wings. The other stuff was...  well, it wasn't nearly as good as the wings.  

The banchan served along with our food at BonChon consisted of sweet cole slaw and mild crunchy pickled radish cubes. Eaten alone, they were bland. But when snacked on in-between the fiery or garlicky wings, they gained a lot more appreciation!

The two entrees we ordered, pictured and described below, were good. Korean food doesn't skimp on flavors, so almost anything you get will be good.

But BonChon Chicken is all about the WINGS, and this is definitely a reason to return!

Oh, by the way, an added bonus was that you do not walk out of the restaurant smelling like the kitchen.  This is not a Korean BBQ place where you leave wearing the smell of all the food on the menu. It is a bright and airy restaurant with great exhaust, large windows and modern furniture.  There is just really no reason not to check it out. 

 Complimentary sweet cole slaw and the mildest crunchiest pickled radish we ever tasted

 Medium Combo of 10 bonessless chicken strips - 5 Soy Ginger and 5 Spicy $12.95

 Bull Dak entree - spicy chicken stirfried with rice cakes in fiery sauce topped wth thinly sliced scallions and melted cheese, served with steamed white rice on the side $12.95

Chicken Katsu entree - breaded chicken cutlet served on a bed of steamed rice, drizzled with "katsu" sauce and spicy mayo $11.95

Myanmar Burmese cuisine - Falls Church, VA

7810 Lee Highway
Falls Church, VA
Tel: (703) 289-0013

Like you, my mother taught me that if I have nothing good to say, best not to say anything at all. So, at the risk of being impolite, I am still going to post this blog about our experience at Myanmar restaurant a few days ago. After all, the purpose of this blog is to inform our readers about local area restaurants.

We ate here once before, about 8 years ago. My husband said he is never coming back, but all this time later I could not remember whether I liked it then. I wanted to return to Myanmar - how bad can it be?  After all, I love ALL Asian food! BUT this recent experience has forced me to modify that statement to ...I like MOST Asian food.

Still reading? Thank you!

Myanmar has been the flagship establishment for about 15 years in a tiny - really tiny, and dilapidated - really dilapidated, strip mall on the very lengthy and winding Virginia road - Lee Highway. There must be people who have had good meals here, for it to have lasted this long, right?

On this dining escapade back to Myanmar, my husband refused to have any part of it, per his initial experience. So, I brought along 4 of my unsuspecting, yet adventurous pals. We were led through a dark small empty dining hall to a very bright (70s' fluorescent lights) small dining hall with only one other table being occupied by a family with a screaming toddler, who was periodically rolled outside in his stroller and rolled back into the restaurant when he quieted down.

For starters, we ordered two salads and the samosas. One of the salads was the Green Papaya salad, the other one was... something else. But in reality, the two were practically indistinguishable to the point that even our non-Burmese waiter - he identified himself as Indian, and we identified him as providing terrible service - anyway, our waiter got the salads mixed up, that's how similar they were. Both consisted of some kind of shredded vegetables, smothered in a greasy mayo-like dressing that had a hint of peanut sauce. It was not quite like any papaya I've ever tasted.

In a recent issue of The Washington Diplomat, Michael Coleman, a seemingly kind soul, was very easy on Myanmar, calling it "downtrodden-looking" with "subtle" flavors and "slow and indifferent wait staff." That's pretty spot on, except with all the negativity in Mr. Coleman's review, he still somehow managed to enjoy some of the dishes. He suggested the fish soup called Mohingar, which I ordered, since usually I love soups, especially fish soups. Basically, it was a pile of mushy rice noodles, a boiled egg, and some kind of a thick fishy broth that had an absence of any flavor at all. The two dry lime wedges and the 3 half-stalks of fresh cilantro that came a-la-pho on the side, hardly enhanced the flavor.

My last dish was the Vegetable Curry. Let's just say... it had vegetables, including one of my favorites - Okra. As for the other entrees, I don't exactly recall the chicken dishes that my friends ordered, only that all of them were swimming in chili oil. The chicken was swimming in chili oil, not my friends. As you can see in the photos below.

There were actually two things that I liked about Myanmar, and you'll never guess what they were:

One is the Jamaican Ginger Beer. In a Burmese restaurant. Nonetheless, it was bottled, imported from Jamaica, and it was very good. 

And two.... wait for it.... when we complained that one of our chicken dishes took nearly 40 minutes to come out and suggested that they should not charge us for a dish that took so long to be served, the waiter brought out the actual owner. She did comp us the meal, to her credit, although she could care less about the fact that our water glasses were never refilled, etc. AND she said something that was music to an Asian food lover's ears - THIS RESTAURANT IS ABOUT TO CLOSE! It is being bought by someone who may turn it into a South American restaurant.

That's certainly welcome news! Maybe now I will be able to once again say that I love ALL Asian food. I know there are several other Burmese restaurants in the Northern Virginia area.... should we go see if they are any different? Please tell me that not all Burmese restaurants are as bad as Myanmar.  ALL COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS ON THIS TOPIC FROM OUR READERS WILL BE WELCOMED!!!

Fortunately, we still managed to enjoy our evening with friends with great conversation.

 One of the salads, makes no difference which one, since they were indistinguishable

 Mohingar fish soup with mushy noodles and tiny side of dry lime wedges and cilantro

 What the soup looks like when it's all put together

 Communal rice bowl and something swimming in chili oil

 One of the chicken dishes on top and vegetable curry on the bottom

Huong Viet - Vietnamese food at the Eden Center, Falls Church, VA

Huong Viet Restaurant

The Eden Center

6785 Wilson Blvd
Falls Church , VA 22044
Tel: (703) 538-7110

This is as authentic as it gets. No question Huong Viet is the flagship restaurant of the famous Northern Virginia hub of Vietnamese food - THE FAMOUS EDEN CENTER at the busy Seven Corners intersection in Falls Church.  

This is arguably the best and certainly the oldest restaurant in the Eden Center - Huong Viet has been serving its delicous food for 23 years.

Huong Viet has received the Washingtonian Magazine's Best Bargain or some other kind of award every year at least for the last 10 years, and when you come here you'll soon know why. The family-style dishes here are all mouthwatering. 

Ethnic dives aficionados, like us, know to expect spotty service, and Huong Viet is no exception to that. Not all staff speak English and proactiveness is rewarded when asking for a water refill. Nonetheless, our waitress was knowledgeable and helpful, describing dishes and suggesting options. Wait staff are quick to take orders and food is quick to come out; tables are quick to turn over.  This restaurant seems to do a lot of takeout service, as diners were stopping by in a steady stream and leaving with lots of bags of delicious goodness.

Our 3 appetizers and 3 entrees were all terrific. Flavors are delectable. We ordered fish, chicken and veggies that all complemented each other wonderfully. Dishes are family-style, meaning if you order chicken, you get a plate of chicken with a few lettuce leaves and carrot slices. Any additional veggies must be ordered separately. A large bowl of white steamed rice accompanies each meal for no extra charge. Please see our photos below with the food description in captions. All were absolutely delicious!

Decor is humble, showcasing the multiple awards along all the walls. Tables and chairs are clean, but, as ethnic dives go, a shabbily charming.

MOST IMPORTANTLY - THIS IS AN ALL CASH OPERATIONS. We did not see an ATM on premises, so come prepared.

Each item on the menu deserves to be ordered and savored, so we will have to visit many more times to make our way through the extensive list of choices.

To top off your meal with some sweets and a change of scenery, stroll a few doors toward your left as you exit Huong Viet for a refreshing and naturally sweet Sugar Cane drink.  PLUS, DO PICK UP some fabulous Lotus Cookies from the Kim Phong Bakery to take home! Each time you eat a cookie, you'll remember the great food of Eden Center.

 As you enter the U-shaped Eden Center, the restaurant is on the LEFT

 Cheerful entrance showcasing awards and press

 Wonderful Shrimp Pancakes Appetizer

 Delicious Spring Rolls - veggies with pork - Appetizer

 Fresh Spring Rolls with Veggies - Appetizer

 Fantastic Fish in a Clay Pot

 Perfectly grilled and seasoned Lemongrass Chicken

 Chinese Broccoli and Shitake Mushrooms in a spectacular garlic sauce

What a great meal!

Refreshing, naturally sweet Sugar Cane drink freshly squeezed from raw sugar cane in a special juicer in front of you

Great semi-sweet Lotus Cookies from Kim Phung Bakery