Every year for Aarti's b-day, we try to keep a tradition of getting Ethiopian food. Even though NYC is one of the most diverse cities in the world, strangely enough, there aren't a ton of Ethiopian options in NYC. I wanted to try a new place, but we ended up going back to one of our usual haunts, Meskerem in the West Village. There's not much in the way of ambiance as it's in this beat up downstairs area on Bleecker Street (a street full of NYU haunts). It's small inside with tables that seat no more than 4 people at one time, but it was cozy enough for Aarti and I. The menu is pretty extensive with lots of both meat and vegetarian options. Since it was Aarti's b-day, we opted for the vegetarian combo for two ($28) and the avocado appetizer ($6). After looking at the menu, I would say that the combos (either the veggie or the meat/veggie one) are definitely the way to go because it lets you try tons of different kinds of dishes at a fairly reasonable price. If you ordered individually, single entrees of one type of dish would run you $13-15 each.
The avocado dish was served on injera bread with chopped avocado, tomatoes, green peppers and onions. It was kind of like guacamole but not all mashed up. The dish was great but honestly the ratio of injera and avocado mix was way off. There was about 3-4 scoops of the avocado and by the time we were done with it we were left with tons of injera and nothing left to eat with it. The veggie combo comes with miser alech (lentils with curry), miser wat (lentils with berbere sauce), shro wat (chickpeas with berbere cause), sautéed string beans with carrots and onions, a mixture of cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, collard greens, and chickpea balls. And of course it comes on top of injera and then served with another side of injera. So yeah - it was tons of food. To be honest, it was really hard to tell what was what on the plate because they all kind of look the same except for the cabbage, the green beans and the collard greens. The injera was nice and soft and spongy and I started sopping up a little bit of everything from the plate. All the mixes were flavorful and one of them had an especially strong kick to it. I used the cabbage mix to cool off my mouth and to re-set my palate. Even though there wasn't any meat on the plate, the injera really fills you up very quickly. We were both really full after an hour or so and Ethiopian food isn't really the kind of food you want to take home with you. While I really enjoyed all the different mixtures on the plate, it would have been nice if there was a bit more differentiation in texture/consistency among them.
All in all, I don't have any major complaints about this place and for the price and what you get for the combinations it is very reasonable. It's a solid restaurant that could just use a bit of touch up to their decor. I would warn that most Ethiopian wines are super super sweet, so I would probably stick with the beer. There are a few other Ethiopian places that I haven't tried that are in Harlem, but if you're looking to stick to the downtown area, Meskerem is a good but low key choice. Total bill: $57 for 2 with tax and tip
Photo Credit: Yelp
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