Masala Art

Was there for 2 hours with friends. ordered food THREE times and NEVER got it… wtf??? I understand they were busy and we were near the bar, but seriously… after I finally just asked for a check they offered to «go get it reap quick from the kitchen»… after 2 hours, is that a joke? It’s too bad cause I was starving and the food looked delicious… and they still charged me for the one drink I ordered… I realize this probably isn’t the norm for this place but come on, if you order from 1 person twice they should follow up. not to mention the first person I ordered from

We go to Masala Art about once a month and it’s always a treat. The food is delicious and the atmosphere nice. On New Year’s Eve we had the restaurant cater a 27 person meal. When we first e-​mailed with our request, they immediately called back and were quite helpful. Later we went by the restaurant to try appetizers and Sami was quite helpful in providing menu assistance and feedback. Atul helped us to finalize the menu and coordinate delivery.
The food was delivered exactly on time and was piping hot. The guests raved about the food and we were quite pleased with how it turned it out. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Masala Art for a night out or catering.
Not to miss: Ambi Shrimp Curry. It’s divine!

I went to Masala Art for a birthday celebration with a few friends — I’ve never heard of the place before, but most of the dishes were very tasty.
The set up was more of a formal dining room. Didn’t really know what to expect, but the vibe is rather intimate and I saw a few people on dates. They also have a bar in a separate area if you don’t want that kind of intimate experience.
One of my favorite restaurants in DC is Rasika, so in effect, I’m spoiled by their high-​quality Indian food. But at the same time, I’m used to and recognize their style of Indian cuisine. The menu here had completely different dishes with different words for me to learn. I enjoyed that aspect, because I’ve been to a lot of Indian restaurants, but I still like to be surprised!
I started with the chicken with basil appetizer — four big chunks of chicken that were very well cooked and very tasty. My main course was a chicken biryani, and it was a large portion for the price. I really enjoyed my meal. My partner got the salmon curry, and will he really loved the sauce, he felt that the salmon itself was past its sell-​by date. Basically, a lower quality fish with a delightfully overpowering sauce. My other friend felt the same way about his baby eggplant dish — that they mask a lower quality ingredient with a great sauce.
That’s the main reason I’m giving Masala Art four stars and not five. I personally enjoyed all my food, but if people I were with didn’t have an amazing time, I have to take that into account.
Service was friendly enough, but the backwaiter had some language issues so he couldn’t really understand any of our requests.
Overall, I’m not really familiar with all the restaurant options in this part of Southwest — but I did have a good meal here and it does seem like a good place for a date.

We trudged through the snow Wednesday night and boy was it worth it! The staff at Masala Art were professional, polished and attentive and while it is a medium-​large sized restaurant, it felt incredibly intimate. We started with the Bhelpuri which had a nice kick and great crunchy texture. The presentation was amazing – almost a pseudo tortilla bowl, but made out of nann. Very creative and fun.
I got the Chicken Tikka Masala which had huge chunks of moist meat. The sauce had a ton of depth that didn’t seem spicy when you first started eating, but definitely kept building as you ate it and ended up having quite a kick! My boyfriend got the Lamb Vindaloo and said it was quite good, but not the best he has ever had. Our friend ordered the Karahi Chicken which she really enjoyed.
Overall we were qutie happy and will definitely head back again soon!

The Paneer Makhani was delicious as was everything else I ate! My only complaint was that their rice didn’t taste good. I don’t know if it was brown rice or burnt tomato flavored rice, but it just wasn’t good. They have a huge dessert menu but no carrot halwa.

I’ve been remiss in not posting sooner. My boyfriend and I go here ALL THE TIME because it is simply amazing! Angelo and the rest of the staff always give great service, the wine list is good and the food is delicious! I especially recommend going for brunch and doing the buffet. We’ve been to the buffet a number of times, and it has had different dishes every time. For dinner, I especially recommend the lamb biryani. So far, I haven’t yet figured out how you can go wrong at Masala Art!

This is our new favorite Indian restaurant and a perfect neighborhood spot for a date night or evening with a close group of friends. We’ve tried quite a few things on the menu and have generally been pleased. The garlic naan is fantastic and my husband likes that they will serve their entrees spicy enough for his taste. It’s nice they offer a half portion of the vegetarian issues as we often like to order an additional half portion vegetarian entrée to go along with our entrée.

Great food! Great drinks! Great service!
I have had the mint Merriment (cocktail), lamb neelgiri korma, saag paneer, rock salt cilantro naan, and bread pudding. The saag paneer was okay and everything else was amazing! I couldn’t stop eating the neelgiri korma. The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful. I asked for food recommendations and they helped me navigate the menu. I highly recommend it.

ate lunch buffet. reasonably priced wrt the upscale décor and service. the staff was one of the most well trained and efficient, i have seen in all the 40 – 50 odd places I visited during my entire tour of US east coast.
food was good. best sambhar, coconut chutney and uttapam. vegetarians must visit this place to take a break from hectic museum visits in DC. all indian food lovers can visit for nice Indian food taste that is not too spicy but still retains the authenticity.

The meal at Masala Art was great. Very well spiced and seemed authentic. The vegetable samosa was a stand out as well as the chargrilled shrimp. The shrimp was fresh, huge, and very, very spicy. I wouldn’t recommend it to those that don’t enjoy that palette, just as heads up. While the food was amazing, the three star review is really for the service. We were tucked away in a back corner table and really felt forgotten once the restaurant got busier. The service for the first portion of our meal was great, but it took far longer than it should have to clear the plates as well as bring the check.
I would all in all go again though. Well worth it.

Located right by the Tenleytown metro, this is the perfect place to get your lunch buffet on! I was really craving Indian food for a while after reading Jhumpa Lahiri’s books… and this place really lived up to all the standards that «The Namesake» set for me.
We were immediately seated on a Saturday afternoon and encouraged to go to the buffet, which was honestly amazing. One table starts you off with appetizers (and excuse me if I don’t know the proper names for these dishes, it doesn’t mean that I love them any less!) — puffed rice and chips with an assortment of toppings like fresh mangoes, onions, tomatoes, etc. There was also a large plate of salad for vegetarians. And of course, they had chicken tikka masala — which was delicious, whole chicken with a flavorful sauce. They also had what I believe is ground lamb with chickpeas… and gosh, that was also very good. And for my vegetarians — string beans and squash. The rice was also well cooked, not too dry but paired perfectly with the dishes offered. There is a huge variety, which is great for everyone.
They also had rice pudding for dessert, which I did not try, but I’m sure it was also great. Let’s also not forget that each table gets a basket of naan, one of the best things ever.
The only thing to make this better was the bathroom — DOUBLE toilets, in BOTH bathrooms. Strange arrangement, but still usable and fairly clean.

One of my new favorites!
Everything I’ve had has been super tasty. My Indian friends from work tell me the food is extremely authentic. I particularly enjoyed the black pepper and garlic naan and the spinach and cheese.
They have a wonderful selection of vegetarian dishes (can be a side for us meat lovers) and very good small appetizers.
The deserts they have are awesome!
I’ve done the lunch buffet a few times and it’s a great value; however, the dinner menu has so much more to offer.
All and all a great place; if you want to ensure a spot get a reservation as they are a little on the smaller size.

My experience was not great. The appetizers were not good. All of them seem to have been prepared and just reheated when ordered. Moreover they all tasted the same. Service was poor. Dishes were served without serving spoons. Everyone seemed to be interns.
They even charge for additional green chutney which was something I never have ever seen. It’s like charging for hot sauce in an American restaurant.
This place seriously needs to live upto the prices of its dishes.

I totally love Masala Art!
It isn’t too far from my house. But, even if it was, I’d drive across town to get there. This is some of the best Indian food I’ve had in the area. They have a small restaurant with a pretty good buffet. I love every dish I’ve had there. I would highly recommend it. My aunt, who is a total Indian cuisine snob, even liked it. I’ve taken her to every Indian restaurant in the area. She thinks she is some expert Indian food critic because she lived in London for years. And, she even approved! Hope you try it out.

A couple whose toddler I babysat for a few weeks ago went to the waterfront location and raved about Masala Art. Like me, they’ve had difficulty finding excellent Indian restaurants. My guy and I came here for dinner yesterday.
We shared a strawberry daiquiri which was sweet but had a bit too much ice for our taste.
I had the veggie biryani and he had the lamb vindaloo. The biryani had the right amount of flavor without being overly spicy or greasy. It also came with a tasty yogurt sauce. He liked the vindaloo but said the sauce was very spicy. We also shared an order of naan. We shared the bread pudding and agreed it was amazing.
Service was also excellent. Everyone we encountered was very friendly. Between Masala Art and Taj of India, I now have two excellent Indian restaurants on my list. And good indian food is difficult to find so thank you MA for a great meal!

The food is ok, definitely not the best in the area. I don’t know what the hype is all about. I went with a group of 12 for dinner and it’s just not great at accommodating big parties. The food took a really long time with no appetizers or anything to help the wait. The rice is served on the plate which makes it hard to try different dishes and there was no naan. Really? The portions are too small. The desserts are miniscule. What’s worth seeing: the 2 toilets facing each other in the bathroom. Do people really chat as they do their business in the bathroom? LoL

The food at Masala Art is good, and that’s why it breaks my heart to have to say I’ll probably never be stepping foot into this restaurant ever again.
When dining out at any restaurant, it’s common to occasionally encounter lackluster customer service, but what I experienced at Masala Art last night was by far the WORST customer experience I’ve *ever* experienced, and it was on the part of the Manager (who should absolutely know better than to treat customers poorly).
Our waiter was great, and I told him so. Our food was good. Ambiance was nice, until the Manager made a beeline for our table to aggressively tell us to hurry up and get out, because they overbooked and didn’t have enough tables for their scheduled reservations.
Here’s how it went down: a friend and I met at Masala Art at 6:30pm. We did not have reservations, but were seated immediately and given menus. It had been a hard day for both of us so we were looking forward to chatting and relaxing with a nice meal at the end of a hard week.
We ordered a round of drinks, an appetizer, and our entrées. The appetizer took a while to come out, but we were chatting and sipping cocktails so we didn’t mind. The appetizer arrived and though for some reason there was a random (Ritz-​like?) cracker in it that wasn’t supposed to be there, we giggled about it, brushed it aside, and kept eating.
We kept on chatting and sipping our drinks while we waited quite a long time for our entrées to come out. Again, we didn’t mind. We weren’t in a rush, plus we knew that things get super busy on a Friday night.
Our entrées finally arrived, and we ordered another round of drinks. My friend had a chicken/​cashew sauce dish that was good, and I had the malai kofta (cottage cheese balls with diced prunes). We ate, our table was cleared, and the waiter came back to give us dessert menus.
My friend and I were looking at the dessert menus and chatting, and still had half of our second round of drinks left. At that point, the manager comes over and says «Are you ordering dessert?» We said we hadn’t decided yet (we had had the menus for about 5 minutes and still had half of our drinks left) and he outright told us «Well we gave you this table without a reservation, and now we need you to leave because we can’t seat our guests who did make reservations.»
Uh…what?
Start to finish, our entire dining experience lasted a not atypical 2 hours total, and it was only *that* long because the restaurant itself took so long bringing out our orders. We had spent quite a bit of money there that night for two people, with an appetizer, two entrées and two rounds of drinks (the place isn’t cheap, mind you).
I responded to the Manager by saying «Wow. That’s really impolite.» And he responded with «Sorry, but I need this table.» Uh, ok. So #sorrynotsorry is what I“m feeling here.
I then told him that I didn’t appreciate being rushed out of the restaurant, and I’d be following up with a negative review. He then said «Do whatever you want, I don’t care.» Just, you know… get out.
Thanks, sir. Way to make your customers feel welcome, especially after handing you a decent sum of money for the evening.
We declined dessert but did finish the drinks we had ordered. Then we left, but not before I approached the manager again to tell him how inappropriately, aggressively and impolitely he had treated us that evening. He then said «I apologized. Do you accept my apology?» I said «No, because right after you apologized you were rude to me again; how sorry could you have actually been?» He then said «I am sorry. We just had a rush and I was trying to make room for customers with reservations. Next time you’re here, we’ll give you a glass of champagne on us.»
I left less heated after this exchange, but Masala Art has left a bad taste in my mouth, and I hesitate now to recommend it or ever go again. Because here’s the thing:
1) If their staff had told us *WHEN THEY SEATED US* that we only had a certain amount of time to eat there because reservations were coming in, they would have adjusted our expectations as customers from the beginning and this whole unpleasant scene would have been avoided.
2) There’s a nice way and a flat-​out rude and disrespectful way to tell your customer that you need their table. Unfortunately, the Masala Art Manager’s knee-​jerk reaction is to tell you in a disrespectful and least professional way possible. If they simply explained that they overbooked themselves and sincerely apologized, we would have understood and helped them out.
3) The Manager did, in fairness, eventually give a better apology. But only after I approached him; he never proactively approached us to make things better.
So in sum: if going with Masala Art, I guess just go with their delivery? We left feeling disrespected, and will not be supporting them in any way going forward.

First let me say this is my first time writing a review on Unilocal or any site (for good or bad) it’s not something I do. However the food I received at Masala Art this evening was beyond terrible. I’ve eaten dinner there 3 or 4 times previously and absolutely loved the food there. Tonight was a different story. I ordered take out for me and my mom for her birthday since she was under the weather and didn’t want to come out in the cold weather. Maybe take out from them is from some mediocre chef cooking in their back alley. I’m not going to attempt to spell the Indian dish names at the moment but here’s the run down…
I ordered the cauliflower appetizer for us to share — which was actually good. Rockfish entrée for myself — seasoned well but amazingly dryyyyy. The rice that came with had several large chunks/​clumps of rice throughout as if it was old, had to break it up myself. For mom I ordered the lamp chops which came with rice and 3 chops. 2 chops were extra tiny and overly cooked like we needed a saw to cut through them. The 3^rd chop was gigantic, she cut in and it was almost still alive — extra rare. And they definitely OVER seasoned. She thanked me for her birthday meal and though she doesn’t ever want to waste food she couldn’t stomach another bite and to the trash it all went. It’s been almost a year since I’ve dined there prior to today. And I don’t think I just came on an «off» night. I believe the quality has gone in the toilet. I will not be returning again. $ 60 down the drain tonight.

4.5 stars
My fiancé and I had a great dinner this past weekend. We were very impressed and pleased with the new Indian in the area– it is greatly needed!
The location is nice with lots of light and close to the metro as others have mentioned.
Gluten-​free patrons would do very well here. They have chickpea flour onion rings which were delicious (be careful with the sauces though– they pack a hidden punch of spice). They also have chickpea flour bread, which we didn’t try, but will next time we go back.
We ordered the paneer tawa with a side of palak paneer, the lamb curry with pepper and a side of dal makhani.
Overall, the food is a more soupy than one would expect– make sure you have naan or rice to soak it all up!
The dal makhani was amazingly tasty.
My fiancé was a huge fan of the lamb curry– I thought it was just alright. The lamb was a bit overcooked for my taste, but I’m not a huge lamb fan.
The paneer tawa is shockingly red– like they poured a can of tomato sauce over it. The dish grew on me though as I continued to eat it because the flavors are very rich. I wish I had come with the paneer makhani so that it would have been slightly creamier, but overall it was good.
The palak paneer was good as well– the spinach was more finely pureed than you normally see but again, the spices and flavoring were good.
The prices were about 1 – 2 dollars more than we’d like to pay, but the food was so good that we were fine with the price.
We will definitely be ordering from here again and it seems like they MIGHT have delivery (or at least take-​out options) so we will definitely take advantage of that.
Also, the dining crowd here on Saturday night was one of the oldest that I’ve seen in DC and we were eating at 7pm, so it wasn’t a timing thing. I was slightly off-​put when I walked in, but don’t let a strange vibe stop you from a great meal.

So far, so good. I’m so happy to have Masala Art in the neighborhood, as Station 4 desperately needed some competition. The restaurant is very beautiful inside, they really made great use of this space and because the location is in the corner of the block, there is lots if wonderful natural light. The bar area is small, but nice.
HH specials right now only include beer, wine and rail drinks for $ 4 and runs from 4:00 to 7:00. They also have infused cocktails at the bar: one bourbon, one rum and one vodka. I got to try the vodka one, the Vanilla Appletini, which was good, but very sweet. If I wasn’t hungover, I would have tried more of the cocktails. The bartender, Patrick, was also very nice.
The food is very good as well, but a little pricy. I tried the Tandoori Murg ki Khurchan, which was pulled chicken with a flavorful sauce. I was also very excited to see that they have gluten-​free roti for when I actually want to stick to my diet.
The kitchen was a bit slow, but it just opened, so I’ll let them work out those kinks. I look forward to trying more food here.