DC Area: Urban Thai in Crystal City

Urban Thai: 561 S. 23rd Street in Crystal City

I'm posting on behalf of MrsF, who's at the Bookseller's Expo near DC this year. My comments will be italic, and I'm paraphrasing our earlier phone conversation, so hopefully she won't shoot me for misquoting.

So I looked out my hotel room window and saw a place with Kabob in the name, and "Pakistani and Indian cuisine" so I decided to take a gamble. However, it was only counter service (MrsF has vetoed a number of high chow-potential meals in the past based solely on wanting to be served at the table). But I turned around, and there were a whole bunch of restaurants: Bulgarian, Thai, Japanese... (Looking for info on the restaurant on the 'net, I found this neighborhood is considered a "Restaurant Row").

Urban Thai had a very interesting menu, so I tried them out. For appetizer I had a smoked chicken and crab wrapped up, like a fried egg roll (sic), which was great.

For an entree, I ordered lamb -- I've never seen lamb on a Thai menu before (I commented that this sounded a bit of a nouveau Thai kind of place, she agreed). It was done with basil, like the classic Thai chicken basil, and it went really well together.

Me again -- it doesn't sound like a Spoon or Las Vegas Lotus of Siam foodgasm, but they're doing some interesting things without straying from Thai flavors. I did some digging on CH and found a few people liking what they do with pork belly and when you ask them to turn the spice up to "obscene" levels