Chaatwala, an Indian street food restaurant at 1050 Elden Street in Herndon, ranks No. 36 on The Washington Post’s 2026 list of the 40 best restaurants in the D.C. area. The Post published the ranking on Wednesday, October 14. It is the first top 40 from Elazar Sontag, who took over as the Post’s food critic in November 2025, succeeding Tom Sietsema. Sontag ate at 189 restaurants over 10 months to build the list, Patch reports.
Chaatwala is the only Reston or Herndon restaurant on the list.
Sontag picked Chaatwala from Herndon’s long roster of Indian restaurants
Chaatwala specializes in chaat, the sweet, sour, spicy and crunchy snacks sold by street vendors across India. FFXnow’s summary of the review says Sontag singled it out among the many Indian and South Asian restaurants around Herndon. He praised the dahi bhalla, lentil dumplings in yogurt, and the chole bhature, a chickpea curry served with puffy fried bread. He found the portions sized for snacking but filling enough to last until the next meal. Owner Jaisimha Jaithirth wants to franchise the restaurant, and Sontag wrote that he is “rooting for him.”
The menu runs from Maharashtrian street snacks to a Bengaluru dosa
Chaatwala’s menu lists gol guppa at $9.99: hollow fried puffs filled with potato and chickpeas, served with a mint and cilantro water. Misal pav pairs a spicy curry of sprouted beans with a crunchy topping and buttered rolls. Kanda poha, a Maharashtrian dish of flattened rice cooked with onions, leads an all-day breakfast section. The menu also carries a masala dosa it credits to Bengaluru, a thali (a set platter) with roti, dal, rice and two vegetable dishes of the day, and masala chai.
Economist Tyler Cowen wrote up Chaatwala in his Ethnic Dining Guide in August 2023. His favorite was the papdi bhalla chaat: crisp wafers and lentil dumplings under yogurt, chutneys and pomegranate seeds.
Chaatwala sits on Elden Street, a short drive west of downtown Herndon
FFXnow places the restaurant in the Dulles Park shopping center. The storefront sits about two-thirds of a mile west of the Herndon Depot Museum as the crow flies, with parking in the shopping center lot.
Chaatwala’s website lists hours of 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Monday hours differ between listings, so call 888-504-9666 before a Monday visit. The site also takes orders for pickup and delivery.
When we help buyers compare Herndon neighborhoods, the restaurants a few minutes from home go on the scorecard next to commute times and schools. Chaatwala adds a Post top 40 pick to the Elden Street corridor west of downtown.
Four other Fairfax-area restaurants made the list
- Truong Tien, No. 10, a Vietnamese restaurant in Eden Center in Falls Church
- Lighthouse Tofu, No. 22, a Korean tofu house in Annandale
- Mama Chang, No. 27, in Fairfax City, which also made Sietsema’s final top 40 in 2025
- Chef Tan, No. 35, a Hunan restaurant in Vienna
See something missing or wrong? Email us at [email protected] and we will check it and update the post.
