In November we let you know that RASA, a fast-casual Indian restaurant with four locations in DC and Virginia, would be taking over the recently-closed Slapfish location at 12033 Rockville Pike in the Montrose Crossing shopping center. After a community day for charity on Wednesday, RASA officially opens its Rockville location today (Thursday, April 27th) at 10:30am.
The restaurant, founded by Rahul Vinod and Sahil Rahman (combined to create the name, RASA), opened its first location in Navy Yard in 2017 before opening a location in Mt. Vernon Triangle in 2020, Crystal City in 2021, and Fairfax this past summer. The menu offers seven chef-curated bowls under the “We Got You” portion of the menu, that includes their signature bowls like the “Tikka Chance on Me”, “Open Sesame”, “Eat Your Veggies”, “Home Cooking”, “Goa Your Own Way”, “Aloo Need is Love”, and “Caul on Me” or the “You Got It” portion of their menu that allows customers to “DIY” and design their own bowl using the assembly line format of a base, main, sauce, veggies, toppings, and chutneys/dressings. The full menu can be seen here.
More on RASA: “Our story starts back when we were just itty bitty little things. You see, we were born into the restaurant industry. Our fathers, hard-working immigrants, moved to this country back in 1985. Old friends from their days back in India, they started working together at a local spot in DC, and in 1991, embarked on the shared adventure of opening their first restaurant together. A year before that, we entered the picture, and have been best friends ever since. Growing up with Bombay Bistro + Indique, we noticed that a lot of our friends either hadn’t tried Indian food or had misperceptions about it. We’d hear stuff like “I don’t like curry!” and “Isn’t it all spicy?” on the reg, and it confused us because we knew curry just meant sauce and there’s such diversity of flavor + heat profiles across India. The food of our families had always been delicious, nutritious, and made with love. So, we’d bring our friends to the restaurant, order for them, and to their surprise, without fail, they would fall for Indian cuisine. Over the years, we’d see these converts coming back for birthday celebrations, graduation dinners, and anniversaries.
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