Abyssinia Ethiopian Restaurant

On Wednesday evening, the Team Ethiopia group made their way to the local Ethiopian Restaurant in town, Abyssinia Ethiopian Restaurant. Most of us had never partook of Ethiopian cuisine and were looking forward to our first introduction here in the States. With the guidance of Ethiopian veterans, Joe & Karyn... typical Ethiopian dishes were selected and served to the group.

We had two full plates full of food... each plate with the same set of items, one for each side of the table. In Ethiopia they do not use utensils, rather we all were given a plateful of "injera" which was also placed underneath the food. It has a pancake like texture and is what you use to pick up the food off the plate and get it into your mouth. You eat the injera also. Below is a photo with each dish listed and labeled.

We had a chicken dish (dora watt), cheese (ibe), cabbage (gomen), lentils (mizur watt), beef (beef T'ibs), chick peas (shuro watt), salmon goulash (asa watt), turnip greens (habesha gomen), potatoes (den-ni), and some lettuce & tomatoes. For the most part, all of the items were cooked with an Ethiopian spice called berbere. The food was a little hot (in the sense of spicy), but not too much. My favorite combination was the beef T'ibs (beef dish) mixed with a little ibe (cheese). It was delicious - I could have kept that all to myself, but I thought better to share.

The injera wasn't bad either. Joe & Karyn warned us that the injera we'll probably get IN Ethiopia will be little more bitter, or fermented like... whereas the restaurant in town always has a fresh batch. It was good there, so we'll see how different it is in Addis Ababa.

Eating at Abyssinia Ethiopian Restaurant and beginning to get to know our teammates on a more person level has made me even more excited about our upcoming journey next month!