Ethiopian Adventure

There's an excellent Ethiopian restaurant nearby that we frequent with Marc and Alana and it has so much character I thought I'd write about it this week. To start, the decor in general is something like what a blind autistic kid might orchestrate. The walls have been recently painted to mostly light blue (an improvement from finger-print-and-other-miscellaneous-dirt-stained off-white), with strips of white at the top and bottom where they didn't want to get too close to the ceiling/floor. Throw some accidental paint streaks on all window and lighting fixtures and *voila*, new paint job. The tables and chairs are of a nameless, rickety, sub-Ikea brand that might adorn an underprivileged elementary school's cafeteria or your backyard left over from the 1980's.

But, upon arrival, you are blinded to all this by the tablecloths. These monstrosities are solid plastic - to the point where I'm surprised that they bend over the edge of the table. But it's the pattern that is so distracting and, really, unnecessary: bright green, yellow and orange flowered print on a white background. It's a bit like the 1960's threw up all over these tablecloths. They are hideous and completely out of place and I have no idea where you could even purchase such an item. They give the place a cheap, awkward feel that lets you know that either the food is really good or really, really bad. Token plastic flowers in a tiny, sad vase adorn each table. And the funny thing is, there isn't a table for four people. There are six tables for three, all pushed up against the side walls and one big table for eight in the center and that's it. Fortunately, we've never come in when anyone else has actually been there (I'm starting to suspect that we're their only customers), so we just take the giant table.

Then they hand you the menus. The menus are a game of luck and chance. I believe they have about a half dozen menus in stock and possibly one of them has all the pages in it. The rest have only selected pages and I believe I've gotten one before that only had the drinks page. Fortunately we've been there enough to know when we are missing pages. It is rather ridiculous but fairly entertaining. We generally use the four menus that we are handed to mentally take stock of all the items on offer to make our decisions.

Up until this last time we went, it was always the same woman working there; I think she was the hostess, waitress, cook, and cashier. She did not speak English. We ordered by pointing. She would waive her hand and say "finish" when they were out of the item we wanted, which was just about every time. She seems like a kind soul, though the masses of scars and tattoos that adorn her arms and face make her mysterious. Her rear end may, in fact, be the size of Ethiopia, which makes her all the more endearing to us.

We order almost the same thing every time and get something completely different. It's like an Ethiopian grab bag. I point, she nods, something different comes out on the plate. But the thing is, it's always good. And I didn't know what I was ordering in the first place, so it doesn't really matter. I point to vegetarian yellow-ish and brown lintel paste with a side of mushy delicious-ness on the menu and get a different vegetarian bean-y paste with a side of lumpy mush. It doesn't really matter. It's all excellent. And the price is right; it's all sooo cheap.

So we go back again and again to the Ethiopian place, to watch Dancing with the Stars muted on the TV and listen to crazy tribal Ethiopian music on the three foot tall, completely disproportionately large speaker in the corner. We laugh, we consume our plate of mush, we try to avoid the sticky spots on the tablecloth. Ahh...I wish I were there now.