Shakthi South Asian Cuisine

Worst pad see ew I’ve ever had, and I’ve had a lot of pad see ew. The noodles were so stiff (undercooked or stale, what have you) I had to resort to dicing it with a knife. I’ve had better pad see ew as leftovers that were several days old and reheated in the microwave. In fact, if they had taken it back and microwaved it with a damp paper towel over it, it would have been a substantial improvement. Anyway, it was a simple order and I couldn’t even finish half. My friend’s rice was equally undercooked.
2 stars instead of 1 because the waiter seemed nice and wore a bow tie.

The drinks are good. The food, a-​ok. Nothing special. Maybe its something for us to get used to. Parking is small, about 6 cars but there’s also street parking. Servers are nice, able to recommend dishes for new comers. Its on the strip mall with all other restaurants. Easy to find. Will only come back if we want something adventurous.

Love this place! Best place for Asian in Del Ray. I have only tried the Sri Lankan menu but it’s great! Great flavors, quality ingredients. We usually go on a weeknight and it’s not very crowded and we get great service. I haven’t had a bad meal here. It isn’t in the nicest part of Del Ray, but don’t let that scare you, the food is great. One day I’ll have to try the Thai or Indian menus, but I haven’t been able to tear myself away from the Sri Lankan so far!

The food a la carte is good and I think priced appropriately. The Sunday buffet falls way below expectation. Overpriced and lacking variety and flavor

The good stuff: chicken biryani
The bad stuff: deviled pork! Half of them is onion!
We were told only chef during the lunch time! Don’t go there for office luncheon when you are in one hour lunch break. Other people called ahead ordered the food then went there.

Tasty!
We initially had some of their food at their booth at the Del Ray Art Walk so we decided we needed to get more — soon!
We started the meal with a very tasty, rectangular box shaped Mas Roti appetizer. This was a great starter and one I’d love to have again.
We had the Mutton Curry, Kotthu Roti and Chicken Lamprais for our mains.
The Mutton Curry was quite tasty. I was hoping for a more wild game flavor — mostly because i absolutely love gamey meat; even though my desire for wild game wasn’t sated, I did enjoy the entrée.
The Kotthu Roti is a typical Sri Lanken street food and the reason we sought out this restaurant. We had the dish at the street fair and it was good, but not spicy enough. When we were in the restaurant we ordered it spicy, and spicy it came! The spice built as I ate it, and I had to take a break to let my mouth cool down, apparently I was the weakling in my group, because my girl and my buddy just kept eating without pause.
The Chicken Lamprais was quite tasty and I thoroughly enjoyed that it was served on a banana leaf. This preparation mixed the flavors of the chicken rice, eggplant, boiled egg, caramelized onions and a fish cutlet in a delicious manner. The chicken was prepared with the nine in it, yet another thing I enjoyed about this meal.
Overall this was a very good meal, and the service was very good. The waiter kept my tiny water goblet full — an insurmountable task when I’m eating spicy food.
We will be back, and hopefully they’ll get their 5^th star!

Where to begin? You know the feeling of being so stuffed that you wish you could be rolled out of the restaurant? That happened here.
This place was almost completely incredible. We had the garlic naan, tom yum shrimp, the Sri Lankan kotthu roti, Indian butter chicken curry, and the Thai spicy eggplant (on the special menu).
The garlic naan was decent, definitely the best that we’ve had in the region, but not the best we’ve had in the world. Would order it again and would recommend it. Its crispy bottom and soft top is unique.
The tom yum was okay, maybe like 3.5 stars okay. The soup was delicious but the shrimp tasted like the bag that it came out from.
The kotthu roti was a huge disappointment; don’t recommend it nor would be order it again. For starters, it arrived cold, as though it had been sitting out the whole evening, stiff edges and all. It was also bland. Nothing worth writing home about, and we couldn’t figure out why it was so highly recommended. Absolute waste of $$.
The butter chicken curry was delicious. It’s definitely the best butter chicken that we’ve had here in the US. Mother dear wanted to be safe, and we’ve found that it’s fairly difficult for a restaurant to mess up butter chicken curry. Totally bomb, and very filling. This dish arrived warm.
The true star of the evening was clearly the spicy eggplant (with some long Thai name that we couldn’t get right). It was amaze balls, we dream of it, drool thinking about it, and highly recommend it. It was that good – but we love Thai food. If you love Thai too, then you must order this! This dish also arrived warm.
Thai tea here is dynamite good, and it’s made fresh.
The bad: service was just not good. We waited a long time for service to make its rounds. We were seated quickly and given menus, but order taking was forever away, while actually receiving the food was light years away! Seriously! It took so long before we could even flag down one of the two waitstaff for a refill. By the time that we received the three main dishes we were full from the naan, the Thai tea, and the long wait time that elapsed between order to receipt. Waiting for the check was an additional 20 minute wait.
**Note: spiciness is SPICY. We can handle heat, but this was uncomfortably hot for our stomachs. With that said, there are three levels to the heat, and next time we’ll go with the middle level.
We were able to share all of the food and it was just enough for us.
This review would realistically be 4.5 stars or even 3 stars, but that Thai dish was out of this world.
Come hungry but be prepared to wait.
$ 65

This place has authentic south Indian flavors. My mom can to visit recently and we stopped by to check this place out. The look on her face said it all…

We had such a pleasant experience here last night. This place is super cute and cozy, and the owner was very warm and welcoming. We’d never had Sri Lankan food before, so he explained the style and flavors for us exceptionally well. My husband had the Kotthu Roti (hot-​level spicy) and I had the chicken curry (mild spice), which were both outstanding! If we lived closer, we’d eat here regularly!

Good food+helpful staff — I ordered kottu roti, which was crunchy, flavorful, and well-​made. My friend had ordered appams (hoppers), they were crisp and the chicken curry served with it was one of the best I’ve had. We finished it off with masala chai, though not the traditional chai latte, it was good. The staff was friendly and helpful. The food was yummm. I’m definitely going back to this place.

This restaraunt serves authentic sri lankan food. I know this, because I’m Sri Lankan. Waiting times I hear can be long but I live nearby and have never had to deal with that.
For the thai and Indian food, it’s Sri Lankanized too! My wife (american) was not amused by her butter chicken but I thought it was delicious and i usually think butter chicken is super boring.
If you expect mild you’re going to get spicy, flavorful and strong. So be warned!

Love this place! Order the Chicken Lamprais… you won’t be disappointed!!! It’s a true Sri Lankan dish.
Everything I had was deeeelish!

We got take-​out from Shakhti recently (they don’t deliver, fyi, but they do take-​out) and we felt so-​so about it. Decent food, but small portions and not as tasty as we had hoped.
We ordered samosas as an appetizer and though tasty, they were two small little salty pastries. Not a great portion. I was also not a huge fan of the chutney they came with. We each ordered chicken tikka masala — mild for my fiancé and medium for me. The medium wasn’t too spicy, but it also wasn’t as creamy as I’m accustomed to have my chicken tikka masala and the chicken was overcooked /​dry. Also, they only gave us one order of rice between us and the portion size was just not worth it for the price.
We wouldn’t be opposed to ordering from there again, but there are other Indian restaurants in the area we’d probably prefer going to first.

We must be from the wrong planet. Everyone loved this place and we didn’t.
We love Thai food and have recently started exploring Indian food, so when this place came up with 4 stars we decided to check it out.
We started out with the samosas which were lovely. My husband doesn’t get the appeal of samosas ever, so he wasn’t impressed, but I thought they were very nice. I was looking forward to the forthcoming dinner.
Because everyone said the Sri Lankan dishes were better, I ordered the string hoppers despite my normal preference for a meat-​based dish. While it wasn’t bad, it wasn’t the bliss that people were raving over.
We ordered medium spice. They must dumb down the spice level for white people, because it was mild at best. We once went to a Korean restaurant where the spice levels were Hot, Medium, Mild & White. I had a giggle at that because it is true. My white mom couldn’t handle even the most mild of Thai food.
Before we got married to each other, our respective «Spouse 1.0’s» were from Thailand and Korea — so we can eat hot. We were looking for something low spice because my husband wasn’t feeling well, so we ordered medium, expecting mild but got «White».
My husband’s chicken curry was on the White spice palette and was thin as well. I am not sure if making thinner curry is more of a regional thing and we need to be looking for a different region.
After having the ambrosial curry at Little India Café in Glen Burnie, MD we were hoping to find something similar closer to home in Alexandria. No such luck.

What a wonderful find! I hope this place is able to keep up and stay in business because the food here is so varied and unique from its counterparts nearby. It might be able to, because there were plenty of parties there on a recent Friday night.
Parking seems a tad confusing at first, but you can either park in the back via the skinny road adjacent to the building (yes, you can get your car through if it’s small) or you can park in the small surface lot next to that (even though it has an old «paint shop parking only» sign).
We walked into a casual space full of tables for small groups or pairs. I’ve heard/​read the service can be slow, but they must have improved it as my group did not experience this at all. Our waiter was super knowledgeable and helpful! We ordered the dhal vade, string hoppers, kotthu roti, and Sri Lankan dosa, all vegetarian. I wanted my kotthu roti without eggs, and the chef happily obliged. In hindsight, the dhal vade were unmemorable and not really worth the calories. Everything else was super tasty — we asked for a medium spicy level, and the dishes matched our request. The string hoppers was a filling entrée and a different meal. The dosa came with a very spicy chutney which was really good. Finally, a truly spicy condiment in a restaurant! Thank you, Shakthi! I liked my kotthu roti the most — it was comforting and reminded me of Thai drunken noodles. I would like to get it with meat next time though; even though I had leftovers, I could’ve finished the whole dish in one sitting with only veggies. My stomach didn’t get full while eating.
We then ordered a cold drink with jello, falooda, rose syrup, and ice cream. If you’re familiar with Indian falooda drinks, falooda is long vermicelli. I usually don’t like it, but the one served here was wonderful. The noodles weren’t long, and everything melted together nicely. This was a great cooling accompaniment to the spicy food. It also didn’t fill me up along the way as a milkshake typically would.
We then wanted to try an authentic Sri Lankan dessert and tea/​coffee. Unfortunately, the «teas with different flavors» equated to Starbucks. That was disappointing. Per our waiter’s suggestion, we got the coconut custard, and it was very, very sweet. There was another sampler with some toffees, but he said that was even sweeter (it’s not on the online menu).
It’s interesting to see this restaurant also serve Indian and Thai food. Pretty much everyone when we were there only ordered the Sri Lankan items. I’m curious to try the other cuisines.
Bottom line: if you’re looking to try unfamiliar dishes in a casual atmosphere, come out here. Even if you change your mind, you’ll find more familiar dishes in the Indian and Thai areas of the menu. However, skip the appetizers and desserts.

Chicken Lamprais came wrapped in a bannana leaf but was also wrapped in plastic outside of it. Flavor was of the chicken was good but it tasted like it was prepared the day before and was just heated up prior to serving (hence the plastic wrap). I would take the plastic wrap off before serving it.
Kotthu roti with lamb was flavorful but tasted microwaved. The appetizer roti was way too doughy that we picked out the potatoes and minced lamb. I thought the roti was going to be thinner with a softer flakier crust but I’m assuming since it is wrapped into a square, it might come out into a different texture.
Overall, I’m glad i tried this restaurant but it is not a cuisine or restaurant I would come back to.

What an incredible experience this was. My girlfriend and I were in the Old Town area for the evening but were underwhelmed with the choices in Old Town proper. We came across the Unilocal listing for Shakthi and figured it was worth a try.
Unequivocally 100% worth it. Every single thing we ordered (and for 2 people we ended up ordering way more than we could conceivably eat or should have) was so on point, so flavorful, and so delightful. This was one of those nights where we came into such an ethereal food experience, and it was thanks to Shakthi.
We don’t usually make it out there often, but Shakthi is certainly bookmarked as one of our new favorites when we are. Highly recommend

The food is so excellent here. They have Indian, Sri Lankan, and Thai food. But my favorite here is the Sri Lankan food. Order the jackfruit curry, it is spectacular. This was probably my 5^th or 6^th time here and it’s become my favorites in town. The restaurant itself is a bit hidden, right across the street from the more famous RTs in Del Ray.
I also recommend the lentils, all of the Sri Lankan curries, and the string hoppers. The owners here are also great and waitstaff very attentive and kind. Go now! And remember they are closed on Mondays, so no way to cure any Monday evening south Asian food craving. But the other six days of the week, this is one of the best in town!

Get the string hoppers! Pressed vermicelli noodles w/​curry and coconut sambal sauce (the coconut stuff is awesome; you could really douse it on anything).
Also get the dhal, naan, kotthu roti to share — lamb/​goat, boiled egg and veggies wrapped in banana leaf. spicy, flavorful + yum! the friendly service is a plus. the waiter/​manager patiently described each menu item that we were curious about. order from the Sri Lankan menu and you’ll leave w/​a full happy belly. shakthi!

I try to eat Sri Lankan food whenever I am traveling because there isn’t any where I live. I lived in Sri Lanka for 4 months and the food was just incredible.
This place is fabulous. Ordered the jackfruit, eggplant, lentils, and pol roti. All of it was outstanding. So much flavor. My lunchmate said it was one if the best meals of his life and wondered why all food doesn’t have this much flavor.
The owner came out and suggested we try the roti with sugar. It was unbelievable. Highly recommended.