Ethiopian Food: Restaurants, Menu Items and How to Eat the Cuisine

Congratulations. You've chosen an under-appreciated and extremely delicious world cuisine to experience and enjoy. You've chosen a restaurant -- in the Yellow Pages or on the Web in a medium-to-large American city -- and you're ready to go.

You're a bit apprehensive. Don't be. You're right: some people in Africa eat strange things. Flying termites. Various organs, "bush meat." Well, they eat rattlesnake in Texas, and let's not even talk about what they eat in China. (Okay, let's talk about it: chicken feet? Chicken feet?!! Really?) You'll probably make it through your first Ethiopian meal having tried nothing stranger that lentils or a new type of bread. But like French or Mediterranean cooking, you'll experience a completely new palate of spices and flavor combinations that will feel like tasting for the first time.

There may be some Americanized options, like the tempura-fried sweat and sour chicken at a Chinese restaurant, but you want a traditional meal. If there are some low wicker tables that you huddle around on small wooden stools, that's where you want to sit. (The tables may have wicker dome covers on them so they look like giant egg cups.) Your meal will consist of several scoops of meat and vegetarian dishes (choose as many dishes as you have diners and share everything) on a huge piece of spongy, sour bread called injira.

Spongy? Yeah, like spongecake. Sour? Yeah, like sourdough. Also flat like a pancake, but as big around as the table its served on. This bread is a staple of Ethiopian cuisine and you'll be hooked after about three bites. Which is good, because it's an essential part of the meal. Not only does it comprise the bed the rest of the meal is served on -- like the taco shell of a new-fangled salad -- but there will be baskets of the stuff scattered around you on little satellite tables, rolled up like moist napkins and cut into neat fist-sized cylinders. There are your utensils; tear off pieces the size of playing cards and use them to scoop up hunks of this and that. Right hand please.

Impress your server by asking for a bottle of tej, even if it's not on the menu. This is Ethiopian honey wine, and I was initially surprised by how closely it resembles wine made from grapes -- until I learned that it is wine made from grapes: a dry white wine mixed with honey-water. Still, it is a good complement to the flavors to the meal as well as a palate cleanser, and I highly recommend it.

You may be offered the option of concluding your meal with a traditional coffee ceremony: think ceremony like "Japanese tea ceremony," not "Catholic wedding ceremony." Again, it's worth investigating; the coffee arrives with the unexpected accompaniment of hot popcorn, and provides yet another opportunity to explore a novel taste and texture pairing.

It's unfortunate that we tend to associate Ethiopia with war, famine, and the forbidding Dark Continent. It seems ridiculous that an emissary for a rich culture stretching back thousands of years -- intertwined with one the oldest sects of Christianity -- should have to convince American minds not of the worth of his culture but its existence. I certainly consider it a big step in the right direction if you instead think of the distinct taste and feel of warm injira wrapped around a hot doro wat, icy sweet honey wine, and a friendly server proudly setting an oversized platter among a group of friends perched on wooden stools. A good meal can be a touchstone for a part of the world you have never glimpsed, a tantalizing glimpse of a rich tapestry of lives and experience.

And this, I hope you'll agree, is a good meal.