Restaurants in Fairfax

Food plays your taste buds like a piano, pressing down combinations that elicit sweet and savory harmonies or bitter discordance. While much of what we eat every day plays our tongue keys on a third-grade level ("Hot Cross Buns"), today's deal to Jaipur Royal Indian Cuisine will serve up a symphony of spicies, savories, sweeties, and salties. For $15, you'll get $35 worth of piquant curry, homemade cheese, and spiced meats to share with your seasoned maestro or fourth-chair flautist.

Since 1950—when it was still known as simply Frozen Custard—staff members at Frozen Dairy Bar and Boardwalk Pizza have applied themselves to the daily task of mixing five custard flavors. In addition to pleasing generations of adoring customers, this dedication earned them a mention in The Washington Post in 2009. Richer than regular ice cream because of its higher butterfat content, slower production times, and well-maintained trust fund, their custard comes in classic vanilla and chocolate as well as a rotating flavor of the day that has, in the past, included mango with diced fresh mango and coconut-and-peanut-butter-fudge swirl packed with pieces of brownie.

In 2007, the owners added New York style pizza to the menu, continuing the tradition of making their menu items fresh each day with hand-tossed dough made from scratch, crowned with fresh toppings, and baked to order in a stone pizza oven. The specialty pies such as Popeye’s favorite—adorned with spinach, roasted red peppers, and eggplant—join fellow Italian specialties such as sub sandwiches served on toasted bread and pasta entrees including baked ziti.

Evo's expansive and eclectic menu wards off midday malaise with an all-tapas lunch, with most dishes priced at $5 each. Coworkers can bond over a round of office gossip—or at the very least, office speculative fan fiction—paired with a few indulgent orders of ravioli filled with butternut squash and smothered in wild mushrooms and sage cream, plump garlic-coated shrimp bathing in a white wine sauce, or sautéed baby spinach and chorizo. If you have the time and an urge to splurge, the Valenciana paella's ($13.75) symphony of chicken, chorizo, scallops, shrimp, mussels, clams, piquillo peppers, and saffron rice is worth the 10-minute wait.

The comfy eatery boasts a massive menu of house-made comfort food alongside Cajun and Creole fare spicy enough to evoke or create vivid memories of New Orleans. Treat your book club president with an order of the deep-fried pickle chips ($7.50) with a dip-worthy creamy horseradish sauce, or opt for the buttermilk-coated and flour-breaded deep-fried Cajun crawfish ($11.50) with a spicy chipotle mayo. Over 20 bread-swaddled southern-inspired sandwich creations entice hunger haters, from the hickory-smoked, hand-pulled pork sandwich ($8.50) smothered in barbecue sauce, to an oyster po' boy ($13.75) with corn-flour-breaded bivalves smushed in a fresh baguette, and half-pound burgers ($7.75 and up) with over 15 tasty toppings from which to choose. Indignant fork loyalists can stick their tines into entrees such as the buttermilk-marinated fried chicken breasts ($13.50) served alongside garlic mashers and sautéed vegetables, or the Bourbon Street pasta ($13) in Cajun cream sauce with Andouille sausage and fresh mushrooms. Barbecue-bound diners can reach for a half rack of hickory-smoked pork ribs ($15) grilled to order and served with beans, slaw, and mashed potatoes, or the surfy-turfy barbecue shrimp and roasted chicken combo ($22).

Every pizza at zpizza is freshly prepared, hand thrown, gently coaxed into the oven using soft birdcalls and pheromone trails, and fire-baked to crispy perfection. The dough is prepared fresh daily from 100% certified-organic wheat, and z is also happy to offer certified organic and gluten-free crusts, sating the pizza desire of the allergic, dieters, and wheat sympathizers. Toppings include award-winning Wisconsin skim mozzarella, MSG-free pepperoni, certified-organic tomato sauce, additive-free sausage, and fresh produce. Try a large ZBQ pizza (with barbecue sauce, mozzarella, barbecue chicken, roasted pepper, red onion, tomato, cilantro, and sweet corn; $20.95 for a large) or a chicken curry and yam rustica (with mozzarella, curry chicken, yam, mango chutney, raisin, and cilantro; $8.95). Vegans can delight in the Berkeley vegan, a faux-cheese veggie pizza (with marinara, veggie burger crumbles, zucchini, tomato, mushroom, red onion, and bell pepper; $10.50 for a small), and traveling tongues can sate their wanderlust with a mouthwatering Moroccan rustica (with pesto, mozzarella, roasted eggplant, feta cheese, caramelized onion, and pine nut; $8.95).

In the dead of night in 1976, the Abi-Najm family boarded a cargo ship bringing only what they could carry; an escape from Civil War in Lebanon called for a quick getaway. They traveled across the ocean to safety in Arlington, Virginia, where they were able to open a small restaurant in 1979. To save money, they changed the eatery’s name from “Athenian Taverna” to “Lebanese Taverna” so that they only had to update one word on the eatery’s marquee.

From these modest beginnings grew a series of eateries that today comprises of six restaurants and four quick-service cafés, all still operated by the Abi-Najm clan. One look at the menu explains the success: chicken shawarma, spicy hummus, lamb tartare—all Lebanese staples that helped the restaurant earn a spot on Northern Virginia magazine's list of 25 Iconic Eats. There's even kibbeh, or stuffed meatballs, which blend ground beef, lamb, almonds, and pine nuts into fried spheres suitable for felling miniature bowling pins on top of the table before entrees arrive. The decor is as striking as the cuisine; inside the Bethesda location, light filters through the colored glass lanterns that decorate the dining room.