With our fearless social leader off to London, my B-school friends and I vowed to try to keep things going with what's left of us here in NYC. We thought it would be fun to do a Global dinner rotation each month with one person picking an ethnic restaurant to try. I took the first stab at it and decided to go with Ethiopian food since most people hadn't tried it before.
I will say that New York is one of the greatest food capitals of the world, but there are a few cuisines where we probably fall behind some other cities. I would say Ethiopian food is much better and more prevalent in DC than it is here. None the less, I thought it would be fun to get the girls together to have some Ethiopian food - plus it's a good cuisine for groups.
Normally I would have chosen to go to the good ole stand by of Meskerem in the West Village but I figured it was worth trying something new. This place seemed to get good enough reviews on Yelp, so I made a reservation here for a Tuesday night. So it turns out this place isn't the kind of restaurant where you really need a reservation. It's quite homey and cute, much more of a local joint that anything else. I'm not sure if it's because of it's location or what but it was very low key and low maintenance. Since it was pouring rain that day, most of us were pretty late but that didn't really matter here. Since we were all starving, we started off the meal with an order of aambusa ($7) which was kind of like their version of a samosa. It was a savory pastry filled with green pepper, jalapeño, onion and beef. There was nothing amazing about this appetizer, but it was just something to fill our stomachs with while we waited for our main dish. With any Ethiopian meal, I usually just go for the combo dishes since it gives you a little bit of everything. Amy got the vegetarian ($15) one for herself and Richelle, Kristin and I split 1 meat and 2 meat and veggie combos together ($16 and $17). To be honest, I never really know what I'm eating with Ethiopian food, I just love the inerja and eating a bunch of random food with my hands with it.
The meat and veggie combo came with doro wat (chicken), ye siga wat (beef), some kind of lamb dish, collard greens, chick peas, green beans, lentils, and cabbage and carrots. I never really know what is what on the plate but I just go for it with the injera and everything always tastes good. I loved their inerja here - very soft, warm and spongy - I couldn't stop eating it. All of the meat and veggies were tasty and had a nice mix of spices - although I felt like it could have used more spices in the meat parts. I did miss the combo not having a hard boiled egg but there was more than enough food to keep me full.
My only real issue was that the service was super slow. Granted there was only 2 people working the entire place and one of them was super pregnant so I do feel a bit bad saying it as they were very nice. I miss Ghenet in Park Slope a lot as it had nice ambience and good food but this place was good enough for a low key casual outing with the girls. Total bill: $39/pp with tax, tip and drinks
Photo Credit: Yelp
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