The Times
For the first time, Chitra Ramaswamy reviewed a meal from a cuisine she had never tasted before – Ethiopian-Eritrean. She was delighted to find it behind a “grotty” wooden door a couple of minutes’ walk from Queen Street station in Glasgow city centre, where she was greeted by the aroma of “what I now know to be berbere — a complex, warm spice blend made of red chillies, fenugreek, ginger, coriander, cardamom, cloves, peppercorn and spices indigenous to the Horn of Africa”, and sat to eat at one of the traditional communal round tables, ‘mesobs’, that give the restaurant its name.
Food is spooned directly on to the injera, a type of flatbread reminiscent of a South Asian dosa, and you eat it by hand, tearing off pieces as you go. Main courses such as ‘zigni wat’, a lamb stew with berbere-spiced butter, arrive in mini clay pots, the juices bleeding into one another and slowly seeping through the tiny fermented holes drilled in the injera.
“Don’t, for God’s sake, ask for cutlery,” advised Chitra, flashing her new-found expertise. “Just get stuck in. Lick your fingers. Wash it all down with a St George, Ethiopia’s most popular lager, brewed since 1922. Afterwards, order the Ethiopian coffee, ceremonially roasted and brewed to order, served in traditional cups with a bowl of popcorn.”
Chitra Ramaswamy - 2024-09-22
