★★ (Very Good)
Suresh Sundas and Dante Datta brought a glimmer of hope to D.C. in 2021 when they defied the pandemic’s bleakness and opened Daru. In their dining room off H Street NE, Sundas served burrata in saucy lentils and saag paneer lasagna set in fortifying curry. With their freewheeling approach, the two joined a wave of young restaurateurs introducing diners to new visions of South Asian cooking.
Four years later, as national appreciation for the region’s foodways continued to grow, Sundas and Datta turned their attention to the roadside kitchens of South Asia. At Tapori, which opened on H Street NE last March, the pair are doing their best work yet.
If anything unites the geographically disparate influences at Tapori, whose menu winds through India and Sundas’s native Nepal, it’s how Sundas and head chef Baburam Sharma study and exalt each dish. They make buckwheat wrappers for their momos from scratch, filling the dumplings with wagyu beef and dappling them with chili oil. Their vada pav are sculptural masterpieces, two halves of a fluffy griddled roll sandwiching a ball of heavily spiced potato in a shattering turmeric-yellow shell. A dosa comes folded into a neat triangle, glowing gold like hay and filled with tender potatoes.
ADVERTISEMENT
My favorite start to dinner is Tapori’s chaat, an endlessly riffable equation typically starting with something starchy – potatoes, chickpeas, puffed rice – then deluged with a mix of sweet, salty, sour and spicy toppings. Sundas turns to lotus root, frying slices of the Swiss-cheese-like stems in a tangy chickpea-flour batter, then painting them with green and tamarind chutneys and thick, sweet yogurt. Small cubes of cucumber, red onion and tomato are scattered about, and edible leaves and flowers erupt from these crisscrossing hills and valleys. The dish is presented as a serene composition, but it’s meant to be eaten messily, quickly, fingers becoming stained and sticky.
– – –
Tapori: 2 stars (Very Good)
Read more about the new stars scale.
Don’t miss: Lotus root chaat, vada pav, wagyu momo, butter chicken, kathal biryani, veggie kulcha.
Skip: Duck choila, boti kebab.
Prices: Small dishes $10 to $22, large dishes $24 to $36.
– – –
Five months after the restaurant opened, the city gained another home for Indian street food when Asheville, North Carolina-based Chai Pani landed at Union Market in a storm of marigold garlands. Competition from an out-of-town chef? Maybe, but the two restaurants’ offerings are as varied as the region is wide. Washington has more than its fair share of excellent Indian restaurants, but Tapori and Chai Pani usher in a new era and a fresh energy. Their menus are distinct, but I see their shared penchant for flair and good times as an uplifting sign of where our city’s culinary scene is headed.
Visual drama is central to the pleasures of Tapori, named for a flamboyant, streetwise subculture associated with Mumbai’s working-class youth and popularized through Bollywood. I love watching steam erupt from a clay pot of biryani as a server cuts through its bread lid tableside. Beneath, fluffy, warmly spiced rice is covered in frizzled onions and punctuated with meaty pieces of jackfruit. Butter chicken is presented with a black garlic butter lollipop, which a server torches, sending hissing droplets raining down. Is it silly? A little bit! Who cares. It doesn’t take long to give in to Tapori’s pursuit of more fun, more color, more action.
Too often, chefs serve mousy little bites and proclaim them “meant for sharing,” but at Tapori, it rings true: Sundas does his finest work with the sorts of dishes best eaten hunched over, surrounded by a few friends, drinks in hand. Vivid murals cover the walls, and mismatched tiles line a long communal table. My favorite seat in the house is at this shared table, smack in the middle of it all.
Cocktails are Datta’s domain, and he meets the room’s electric energy with a sweep of imaginative takes on the classics, created alongside bartender E. Jay Apaga, previously of The Green Zone. I like to launch into the night with the Tapori, a Boulevardier humming with chai spices, tamarind and banana liqueur, but every drink has personality. There’s a fiery jolt of gunpowder seasoning in the Rangeela-Rita, and white pepper gives the pineapple daiquiri a nice edge.
Flashiness sometimes blinds the best of us. A cloche of fragrant smoke is a nice flourish, but the thrill wears off as the cloud dissipates, revealing slices of overcooked duck and a confusing edamame salad. A rendition of boti kebab, a dish of grilled meat often wrapped in bread or served on skewers, feels oddly stuffy. Unwieldy chunks of lamb are cooked past the point of tenderness and served in a pile of broccoli florets with an awkward, old-school swoop of minty sauce. Overly composed entrées feel out of place at Tapori, taking dinner someplace more serious and less fun. Still, these missteps are few, and joy is never far off.
Both Daru and Tapori have received the kind of national attention that prompts some chefs to pursue breakneck expansion. Sundas and Datta seem most interested in the slower, less glamorous work of creating neighborhood restaurants with true staying power. Reservations are easy enough to come by most nights, and service is effusive and unhurried.
Part of running a neighborhood restaurant is knowing your audience, which, during my three dinners at Tapori, seemed evenly split between South Asian diners and those who might come through the doors unfamiliar with the wonders of pani puri and vada pav. “We wanted something that was comforting and people could recognize,” Datta says. So a few months after Tapori opened, the pair did something they had debated since day one and had at first decided against: They started serving butter chicken.
As soon as the dish hit the menu, “it started really moving out the door,” Datta says. Rightly so. Generous chunks of meat arrive in a luscious sauce the color of pumpkin and the thickness of coconut cream, their edges scorched in a tandoor, sparkling beads of butter rising from the emulsion.
It is among the best versions I have tasted, yet I can imagine why Sundas and Datta hesitated to touch a dish that brings up complicated feelings, recalling a not-so-distant time when the cooking of South Asian chefs was pigeonholed and flattened, relegated by many Americans outside the diaspora to the status of inexpensive takeout. If you serve butter chicken, people will come. But what if that’s all they order?
It’s true that when I scan the dining room, I usually catch at least a few blowtorches lighting up as the show begins. Diners watch eagerly as the butter sizzles. They take their first bite. They marvel. But when the dish is done, they make room on their tables, hungry to see what comes next.
Tapori
600 H St. NE. taporidc.com. 202-204-2096. Hours: Wednesday to Monday, 5 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. (Kitchen closes at 10 p.m.) Sound check: 81/Must speak with raised voice. Accessibility: No barriers to entry; ADA-compliant restroom. Dietary considerations: Allergens are listed on menus; many meat-free dishes available.