Lowell O.
Yelp
If you've never tried Ethiopian and you're open to new things, I definitely recommend coming here. I've had Ethiopian in four other restaurants in other cities, and this one is a fair representation of the cuisine. And it serves a local Ethiopian community (there's even an Ethiopian Orthodox Christian church nearby).
About Ethiopian Cuisine - Injera bread is to Ethiopia what forks are to Western cuisine or chopsticks are to Eastern cuisine. It's the vehicle by which you carry food from your plate to your mouth. Traditionally, you don't have any silverware or even your own plate. Ethiopian is traditionally served family style, where one plate feeds all. The injera is the perfect bread for this. It's a flat bread, no thicker than a tortilla, with a sourdough bread taste. It's very soft and flexible. You tear off a piece and use it to pick up your food, which is arranged in piles on a large plate, with more injera bread underneath it.
This place Americanizes the experience a little. Our appetizers came with forks, and our main course included a Western salad (iceberg and tomato in a vinaigrette). I don't think any is that's necessary, but okay.
Coming from larger cities in Texas and California, we really appreciate having authentic international cuisine available in a small Texas town. But the experience would have been better with a couple of changes. There were about 26 of us dining, but half the dining area (a second room) was closed off. The tables were too close together and were a bit too small. There was one waitress (a good one) serving all 7 tables. As wonderful as she was, 1 person cannot effectively serve 26 people. And by "too small," I mean that the tables were not much bigger than the large, beautiful, colorful basket they place on each table and serve the food in. There wasn't enough table space outside on that basket to hold beverages and anything else.
We had the appetizer combo with the Minchet Abish option, which we absolutely loved. For the main course, you order whatever combination of meats and vegetables you want for the whole table. We got Lamb Tibbs (our favorite dish of the night), Kitfo (beef tartare), Tikil Gomen (cabbage in turmeric) and Ater Kik (split peas) and sautéed spinach. All were good. The split peas were surprisingly good and tasted more like lentils or chick peas and not at all like an English pea dish.
Kitfo is tartare. The menu doesn't say it's tartare, and in fact mentions that the chef recommends medium rare, which is how it showed up on our ticket. But it's traditionally tartare (raw); the waitress also mentioned that it's basically tartare, and it came out rare, at best. I enjoyed it, but not everyone at our table of four did. Order it if you like tartare, for sure. And next time, we'll ask if it can be a bit spicy.
Ethiopian can certainly be spicy. And there was a nice level of heat to our Tibbs that we enjoyed. But everything else here was pretty mild (flavorful but not hot), which, in part, may be a bit of Americanization, but I'm sure they'll spice it up a bit if you ask them to.
It's family style, so the more people in your party, the more dishes you can/should try. We over-ordered a bit for the four of us and took a little home, which we mixed with leftover Biryani rice from another meal and created a beautiful fusion dish.
That said, we still ordered dessert and coffee. I absolutely adore their coffee. Very strong and served black but with no bitterness and a nice hint of cardamom. I drank mine without adding any sugar and thoroughly enjoyed it. Dessert was baklava, which is pretty common in Ethiopia but they make it differently than in the Middle East. Baklava can be too sweet. This went the opposite direction.
Also, they have Ethiopian beer. We had St. George, which is a very nice lager.
It's an hour away from us but we made the trek and are glad we did.
