Woodlands Restaurant is a charming place, surrounded by fast food places and other ethnic restaurants, in Fairfax, VA. The interior of the restaurant is open with eighteen tables and a buffet at the far end. Beautiful paintings express the intrinsic spirituality and innate sublime exquisiteness of Indian culture.

Woodlands is rather simply decorated and does not have an outright beauty but rather possesses a subtle charm. Mild Indian music accentuates the dining scene. The music of South India is known as Carnatic music, and its tradition includes rhythmic and structural music composers like Puranda Dasa, Tycgarja, and Muthuswami Dikishitar.

The chefs at Woodlands prepare the food of Southern India. The four provinces in Southern India feature rice as a staple food, and they frequently use lentils.  Coconut is an important ingredient in Kerala, but in Andra Pradesh the cuisine is characterized by pickles and spicy curries. Hyderbadi cuisine is known for its biryani, dosa, idi, and uttapam. There are large coffee estates in southern Karnataka and parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The food of Southern India contrasts starkly with Northern Indian cuisine, which uses strong and pungent spices, dried red chilies and fresh green chilies, coconut, and native fruits and vegetables like tamarind, plantain, snake, gourd, garlic, and ginger.

The highest price dish ($14.75) at Woodlands is a complete dinner with soup, appetizer, two rices, chana curry, kootu, rasan, papal, dessert, coffee or tea.  This quaint restaurant serves snacks of lentil doughnuts and fortunately heavy pakora (fritters). Dosas, the subtly sour crepes made with rice and lentils, can be sampled in more than a dozen different ways, and my favorite way includes buttery potatoes and onions.  Like all the dosas, it is accompanied by coconut buttery chutney and sambat, a sort of vegetable soup ($6).

The pilaf was accented with sweet tamarind, mixed nuts, and raisins. Pungent pickles and tangy yogurt sauce transform this meal into a feast of flavors and textures.  Discover more treats like curries, which include soft crisp okra in a brick red tomato and onion sauce, and uttapam, which one of my friends calls Indian pizza.  It has a blistered surface that acts as a savory canvas for peas, carrots, and onions.

If you have trouble deciding, consider the lunch buffet, a bargain at $6.95 on weekdays, $2 more on the weekend. One drawback to Wooodlands is that it does not serve alcohol, but it does pour a fine mango lassi, a milky tea perfumed with the mysterious spices of cardaman, cloves, and ginger.

If you want to spend a night in the exotic atmosphere of Southern India, Woodlands is the place to be.  Drink a lassi while listening to the mystical Carnata music of Southern India. Surround yourself with the aroma, music, and cuisine of Southern India.  Woodlands restaurant also has two other locations in the nearby Gaithersburg and Langley Park, MD.

Woodlands Restaurant
4078 Jermantown Rd.
Fairfax, VA
(703) 385-1996