I use Django and Tastypie. If you don't need Django's routing, templating, views, etc. then don't use them! Code that is never run doesn't cost you anything. Tastypie lets you build APIs quickly, and the Django admin lets you browse your data without having to write any code at all. For the kinds of apps I build, things can't get easier than this. YMMV, of course.
Have you looked at django-rest-framework? As somebody who has contributed to tastypie, I feel that django-rest-framework is more django-like.