What a pleasant surprise to find a cheap, cute, friendly little Indian place in Adams Morgan.  Not that Jyoti is particularly hidden, but it’s easy to miss some of the cute little restaurants on the East side of 18th when you’re racing up the hill to get a spot in the hour-deep Pasta Mia line.

Jyoti has a really friendly staff (my waiter told me he loved me in Hindi), a pleasant décor, and comparably cheap food.  Apart from the breadth and depth of the vegetarian fare, I really  liked it!  

My friend and I tried the Veggie combo, which consisted of six (seven?) of the veggie curries plus naan and that spicy flat crunchy bread, lemon pickle, and like 4 other sauces.  All this for $12.95 – so $6.50 each!  Even though we were both really hungry, we couldn’t finish this combo (we also had two appetizers, more on that in a second).  Some of the curries were interesting, but I couldn’t tell what they all were.  Definitely avoid the spinach/corn curry, but the thing I thought was Aloo Gobi was my favorite.  The naan was tasty, and the lemon pickle was sweeter than I like it, but still added a kick to the curries.  

The appetizers we ordered were just ok.  We ordered a samosa and some kind of veggie fritter.  The samosa was fine (they’re hard to ruin, fortunately), but the fritters were crispy on the outside and kind of boring and soggy on the inside.  Definitely not bad, and for $1.95, I can’t complain too much.

I had two beers, he had one (why am I out-drinking my dates?!!), we ordered 2 appetizers and the incredibly filling combo which we split, and the total including tip was $36.  You really can’t beat that.  Ok, you can.  But you have to travel to Langley Park, MD.  More on that to come…