Eating Ethiopian at home

 23 October 2021

 

LITTLE ETHIOPIA

76 Shortmarket Street (between Long and Loop Streets), Cape Town

 

Picture the scene: six hungry people tucking into an Ethiopian feast as if to the manor born, delicately using their hands to pick up bite-sized morsels of food with leaves of torn, soft flat bread and eating with great gusto and joyous cheer at the exotic wonderfulness of it all. 

 

No coq au vin was harmed at this dinner party.

 

An Ethiopian friend undertook to cater for the dinner by collecting injera (a sourdough flat bread made from fermented teff flour) and the general accompaniments, mostly vegetarian but also some chicken and lamb, from Little Ethiopia.

 

There was enough injera to cover three platters for six people, to provide a base for the chicken, lamb, beetroot, broccoli, sweetcorn kernels, spinach, lentils,  potato, et al, and  additionally there was a metric fudge tonne of rolled up injera (looking for all the world like rolled up face cloths), far too much for the food, given that one also eats the injera bases in the platters.

 

The food was so nicely plated, the platters did, literally, look good enough to eat. Most of the food had a very subtle flavour; only the chicken had a quite spicy sauce.

 

The wife expressed surprised delight at thoroughly enjoying a cuisine strange to her and ate everything, except for the beetroot. We love mezze and tapas style eating and  this was pretty much in the same ballpark. 

 

Once you’ve eaten the bulk of the elements with the separate rolls of injera, you cannibalise the injera on the platter, by now thoroughly infused with the flavours of the food it had  supported, until you literally clear the platter. 

 

The food was light, tasty, filling and yet not heavy, whereas mezze, specifically with pita or another flatbread, can quickly become too much.

 

I’d  eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant once before, two or three years ago, and was familiar with the type of meal. One highly estimable aspect of Little Ethiopia’s excellent  injera  was that it didn’t cause the rather unfortunate heartburn I’d experienced from the other restaurant’s injera, which had a very sour undertone, even if I did rather overindulge in Little Ethiopia’s offering. The food was strangely addictive.

 

Fun fact: religious Ethiopians are required to fast a lot and on occasion to eschew meat dishes or animal products, which means that  a significant portion of the food is vegan.

 

Ethiopian cuisine is well represented in Cape Town and I can’t tell you which eateries are better than others, but on this experience, you can’t go wrong either eating at Little Ethiopia (though I can’t comment on the joint itself, as I’ve not set foot inside)  or getting a takeaway meal from them, if you crave Eastern African style nosh. It’s huge fun to share.