Kaeng Hung Lay in Herndon

Kaeng Hung Lay is the northern ginger curry — slow-braised pork, ginger and tamarind, and no coconut milk at all. It is one of the dishes that marks a kitchen as genuinely northern rather than central Thai. $18.95, lunch and dinner every day.

Tender, slow-braised pork in a rich ginger and tamarind-based curry. Aromatic, mellow and deeply flavoured, with no coconut milk.

Most Thai curries an American diner meets — green, red, massaman, panang — are built on coconut milk, and that richness is what people expect a curry to taste like. Hung Lay is not one of them. The body comes from the pork itself and from long cooking, and the flavour is carried by ginger, garlic, turmeric and tamarind. The result is deeper and more savoury than a coconut curry, and noticeably less sweet.

The name comes from Burmese, and so does the dish. Hung Lay travelled into the Lanna kingdom around Chiang Mai along the trade routes from Burma, and northern Thai cooks made it their own with more ginger and a heavier hand with tamarind. It is traditionally food for occasions — temple merit-making, festivals, family gatherings — because it takes hours and is better on the second day.

Rich and gingery rather than hot. It is marked spicy on our menu, but the heat sits behind the sourness and the ginger rather than in front of it. If you want it hotter, say so when you order.

Khao Soi, the coconut curry noodle dish from the same region, sits alongside it. So does Boat Noodle Soup and Yen Ta Fo. The Isan dishes from the northeast are a separate tradition again, and the Thai classics are all still on the menu.

We are at 171 Elden Street, Unit 130, Herndon, VA 20170 — the office building next to Virginia Tire & Auto, with free parking outside. We are a short drive from Reston, Sterling and the rest of Fairfax County, and minutes from Dulles Airport. Lunch is 11:00 am to 3:00 pm every day. Dinner is 5:00 to 10:00 pm Sunday through Thursday, and 5:00 to 11:00 pm on Friday and Saturday. Call 703-467-0111.