Stepping into an Ethiopian restaurant is like entering a magical and delicious world, one that many people have yet to explore. Trying a new cuisine can be intimidating, but understanding a bit about Ethiopian food and culture beforehand can make the experience much more enjoyable. This guide will help you navigate your first visit with confidence, covering everything from the staple injera bread to dining etiquette and must-try dishes.
The Heart of Ethiopian Cuisine: Injera
Injera is the national dish of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti. Ethiopian food is typically eaten with injera, a type of flatbread made of native grains. Calling injera a flatbread doesn't do the staple Ethiopian food justice.
Injera is the base of nearly all Ethiopian meals with a tangy taste resembles an ancient grain sourdough. It looks more like a very large crepe with the slight lift and sponginess of a pancake. This is because it's fermented first, with the flour, water, and starter doing their thing over the course of about a couple of days. It’s a flatbread made out of teff flour obtained from the teff grass native to the horn of Africa.
Injera is big in radius, has the texture of a crepe, but has a sour taste. You have to love injera to enjoy Ethiopian food because it forms the backbone of every meal. Ethiopians in the homeland prefer to make their injera with pure teff, a gluten-free grain. But outside of Ethiopia, because teff is more expensive than other flours, restaurants mix it with wheat and/or barley, so it’s not gluten free. Still, in some big cities, you can get pure teff injera imported from Ethiopia, and I highly recommend it.
The very first thing you need to know about Ethiopian food is something called injera. Injera is the staple and the most widely consumed starch / filler in all of Ethiopian cuisine; Most Ethiopians eat it injera, twice, or even three times a day. Injera is made from a grain known as teff, which is ground into flour, made into a batter, slightly fermented, and then fried on a heavy skillet into a giant circular pancake.
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Communal Dining: Sharing is Caring
Ethiopian cuisine is really just as much about the dining experience as it is about the food. There's an emphasis on community and shared experience, as everyone sits shoulder-to-shoulder around the same table - eating off a singular large platter. The food is typically served on an Injera bread that is laid upon a huge round metallic plate called the gebeta. And you get just one gebeta for the entire table. The greater the number of people, the bigger the gebeta.
Food in Ethiopia is served on a platter known as a gebeta, a large circular, usually metal platter. First, a circle of injera is placed on the gebeta, then the different stews, curries, or vegetables, that you’ve ordered are placed on top of the injera. Eating together is an essential part of the Ethiopian culture and feeding each other is often a loving thing to do.
Even the way Ethiopian food is served, on a communal platter, is designed for sharing food with each other. Food is not meant to be eaten alone in the culture of Ethiopia. One thing I learned, by seeing it happen numerous times watching local Ethiopians eat, is that feeding someone a bite of food is seen as a very respectable or loving thing to do.
Dining Etiquette: A Guide to Proper Manners
When eating at an Ethiopian restaurant, it's important to understand the communal nature of the meal. There are many culinary formalities to unpack and rules around proper dining etiquette to follow.
How To Eat Ethiopian Food Properly | Cuisine Code | NowThis
Hand Washing
Since Ethiopian food is shared and everyone eats with their hands, it's customary as well as sanitary to wash your hands before and after a meal. Hand washing before meals is a tradition that spans across many countries and religions around the world. Its main purpose is to ensure cleanliness and safeguard health, but it also serves as a sign of respect. The last thing you want to do is spread germs or offend those who prepared and served your food.
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If you're a guest at an Ethiopian dinner, sometimes the host will bring you a pitcher of warm water and a basin to wash your hands in. In this instance, it's customary to place your hand in the basin and then wait for the host to pour the water over them. When it comes to eating out at an Ethiopian restaurant, this may or may not happen. If not, the best course of action is to wash your hands properly with soap and water in the bathroom.
Using Your Right Hand
When the delicious platter of Ethiopian dishes finally arrives at your table, make sure to use your right hand when handling the injera and scooping up your food. In Ethiopian culture, the left hand is considered unclean, and using it to eat is often seen as rude and improper. So, while using your right hand for everything dining related, make sure to keep your left hand off the table.
Besides being respectful, when everyone eats with their right hand around a shared plate, it provides a certain order and organization that limits elbow bumping. To begin eating, first tear off a bite sized piece of injera with your right hand. No utensils are needed, you eat with your hands, while sharing a single platter of food with everyone you eat with.
Tearing and Scooping
Unlike Italian food, where bread is served as a side dish for dipping, or Mexican food where it's used to wrap all your food in, injera is meant to be torn into pieces. Since it takes the place of your silverware, ensure the piece you tear isn't too large. You want to be able to grab enough bite-sized food but not so much that you have to force a mouthful.
Once you've grabbed your food, go ahead and squeeze the edges so no food falls out of your injera on the way to your mouth. The idea is to avoid clumsiness and push it delicately into your mouth without stuffing or touching your fingers to your lips. Take notice that injera comes both wrapped up on the side of your meal as well as underneath the large, communal plate your dishes are served on. In a way, the latter injera is used as a plate on top of your plate.
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Eating Order and Reaching
The best way to keep dinner orderly when eating Ethiopian food is to first eat the food that's closest to you. This is the customary way to do it, and luckily the plate is often set up so there's a little bit of each dish on each side. Still, there may be times when the main dish is farther from you, and the only way to get it would be to reach across the table.
Avoid reaching abruptly across the table, though, as it's considered rude in Ethiopian culture. Instead, be watchful and try to follow the rhythm of the guests in your party. The most polite option is to wait until most other people have removed their hands from over the plate and then take your turn. If the plate spins, spin it around so that the dish you were looking for is now closer to you - then go for it.
Whichever way you're able to do it, the key is to take turns when reaching to scoop food off the communal plate. There are a lot of delicious dishes in Ethiopian cuisine, and everyone deserves a taste. For some ordering inspiration, here are some iconic Ethiopian foods to try next time you're at an Ethiopian restaurant.
Respecting Elders
In many cultures, a part of proper dining etiquette is to let the eldest guest sitting at the table have the first bite. It's a sign of respect and honor for the person, their kinship, and the culture as a whole. When sitting down for an Ethiopian meal, this tradition is no different. The eldest of the bunch kicks off the eating, and then everyone else can join in.
If you want to go above and beyond, pay attention to the pace and patterns set by the group's oldest member. Not eating too much faster than the eldest is a gesture of compassion.
Gursha: The Act of Feeding
When it comes to Ethiopian dining, it's not uncommon for someone else to feed you. In fact, there's a name for this practice - gursha. "Gursha" comes from the Amharic word for "mouthful" and is performed as a gesture of affection and sign of respect. It's polite to accept and also reciprocate the offering as a way to display the strong bond you have with that person.
When deciding to feed someone else, use the same technique you use for yourself. Scoop up some delicious curry and protein, and then gently place it in your neighbor's mouth. Do your best not to touch their face - being dainty is key here. If you know the person sitting next to you is an adventurous eater and enjoys raw proteins like sushi or steak tartare, feed them a dish called dulet. Dulet is a traditional dish made with minced beef, liver, and tripe.
Avoiding Finger Licking
Licking your fingers while eating is one of many dining etiquette mistakes that many cultures share. Even though you eat Ethiopian food with your hands, this rule still applies. The difference is that it can be a lot more tempting to lick your fingers when you're digging into things free of silverware. Nevertheless, it's still very much frowned upon, not to mention particularly unsanitary given the communal nature of the meal.
There's no doubt you will, at times, scoop up your food with the injera incorrectly. Food on your fingers is pretty inevitable, and you may get an urge to clean it off one way or another. Instead of licking your fingers or heading to the bathroom to wash your hands multiple times, use the next piece of injera you tear off to discreetly wipe your fingers on.
Mixing and Matching
Although it may not come naturally, mixing and matching Ethiopian dishes is customary. Since everything is laid out next to each other on the communal plate, it's easy to accomplish. If you've never had Ethiopian food, start by just tasting each dish individually. Then experiment with a few different combos. One idea is to make sure you have a variety of textures in one bite.
Perhaps scoop up some vegetables, stew, and your protein of choice into one piece of injera. You can also mix spicier dishes like Doro Wat with more mild salad options for a nice balance of heat.
Must-Try Ethiopian Dishes
Here are some iconic Ethiopian foods to try next time you're at an Ethiopian restaurant:
- Doro Wat: The national dish of Ethiopia, a spicy chicken stew with chicken drumsticks or thighs in a rich red sauce (kulet).
- Misr Wat: Spicy red lentils.
- Shiro Wat: A spicy chickpea powder dish. Shiro wat is made from chickpea and broad bean flour, mixed with garlic and onions, and made into a thick, almost paste like substance. Kind of like refried beans but smoother.
- Kitfo: Ground meat seasoned with cardamom, niter kibe and mitmita (a hot red pepper), traditionally served with a side of ayib (Ethiopian cheese).
- Tibs: Stir-fried meat (beef or lamb) with spices, onion, and pepper.
- Beyaynetu: A vegetarian combination platter with various veggie sides.
So let’s examine the different toppings clockwise:
- Tibs Wat: beef cooked in special Berbere sauce (very typical for Ethopians. They cook everything in this sauce, and honestly, you should too).
- Key Sir Alicha: beets, carrots, and potatoes cooked to extreme juiciness. These veggies’ natural sweetness complements the sourness of the injera perfectly.
- Gomen: collard greens cooked with onions, garlic, and ginger. Maybe it doesn’t look so appetizing to you because greens? Ew! But it goes so well with the rest of the food.
- Yater Kik Alicha: yellow split peas cooked with onions, herbs, and peppers. They are so light and creamy-super rich in texture and flavor.
- Doro Wat: you remember the Berbere sauce from above, right? Here, it is the guest star again, this time adding taste and flavor to delicious chicken cubes (in the middle of the plate).
Key Ingredients and Spices
One ingredient that makes many Ethiopian dishes so tasty and easily mixable is niter kibbeh. This is a spiced clarified butter made with garlic, caraway, ginger, turmeric, black cardamom, and koseret (an oregano-like spice). Many Ethiopian dishes are so tasty and easily mixable is niter kibbeh.
- Berbere: A spice blend made of garlic, ginger, fenugreek, chiles, cloves, and various other spices.
- Mitmita: Another similar blend of dry spices, but it’s often salty, and can either be used in cooking, or served as a side seasoning for meat.
- Awaze: The paste version of berbere. You actually get some berbere dry seasoning and mix it with oil (often olive oil), and a bit of Ethiopian wine or whiskey.
- Niter kibbeh: Another highly important ingredient is niter kibbeh, or just Ethiopian butter. The clarified butter is brewed with some spices like fenugreek, cumin, and turmeric, so it has a lovely flavor to it.
Vegetarian and Vegan Options
If you are planning to travel to Ethiopia and you’re vegetarian or vegan, you’re going to thoroughly enjoy yourself. For the most part, when I was traveling in Ethiopia, I would eat vegan food on Wednesdays and Fridays as its commonly available at nearly all restaurants.
Beverages to Accompany Your Meal
For wine, you can choose from several brands made in Ethiopia and exported around the world: There’s Dukam, Axumit, Gouder, Kemila and Awash Crystal. The first three are red, the others are white, and they’re all semi-sweet to semi-dry, Gouder being the driest of the five. There’s also a new line of Ethiopian wines just now being exported: It comes from a French company making wine in Ethiopia with grapes grown there, and you could be the first kid on your block to try one.
Or you can try one of several Ethiopian beer exports: Meta, Bedele, Dashen, Bati, Harar, Hakim Stout and St. George. The Hakim is dark, like its name suggests, and the rest are lagers. My favorite is Dashen, which has a hint of sweetness to it. At an Eritrean restaurant, look for Asmara, a beer named for the country’s capital.
But for the most authentic beverage with your Ethiopian meal, you need to try some t’ej, the 2,000-year-old Ethiopian honey wine. But be careful: Servers at restaurants will sometimes tell you that their t’ej “comes from Ethiopia,” when in fact it probably comes from wineries in California, New York, Indiana or Colorado. I don’t think the servers are trying to trick you: Some have just never read the label, and others probably mean that t’ej is Ethiopian, not even knowing where their particular t’ej comes from.
Finally, you might get lucky and find a restaurant that serves its own t’ej, probably made in the kitchen in jars. Winery t’ej is clear and filtered, but homemade t’ej is cloudier and has a noticeably different taste. This t’ej is sometimes sweeter than the winery varieties - it depends on who’s making it and how long the maker lets it ferment. But try it if you can for a more authentic experience: It will taste much more like what you’ll find in Ethiopian homes and restaurants.
The Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony
If you’re a coffee drinker, then an Ethiopian restaurant is the place for you: Ethiopians were the first people to cultivate coffee as a food, in the ninth century, so it’s an important part of Ethiopian culture, as well as a point of culture pride. For a Ethiopian experience, some restaurants offer to perform the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
In Ethiopia, social life often revolves around coffee, and when families and neighbors have time, they gather for a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony, which can take two or three hours - including the drinking, chatting and munching on crunchy grain snacks, like popcorn or kolo (roasted barley). The hostess roasts the beans over charcoals, then grinds them and brews the coffee in a clay pot called a jebena. The small cups in which the coffee is served are called sini.
Of course, restaurants that offer a ceremony abbreviate things, but your server will bring the roasting beans over to your table and wave her hand above them so the aromatic smoke can waft into your nostrils. Buna is the traditional Ethiopian style of coffee, prepared in a clay pot known as a jebena, and served in small espresso cups.
