Mesob

Mesob
104 14th Street Parking Garage
N.W. Suite #8
Charlottesville, VA
(Check out their online menu!)

It’s hard to find good Ethiopian food in Central Virginia so Mesob is a blessing to those who love this terrific cuisine. Mesob boasts a nice lunch buffet on weekdays and features a variety of tasty dishes. The injera is very good – soft and spongy, absorbing all the flavors of your meal. (And in recent visits, the injeras has been even better than usual. I really enjoy it when it is a bit sticky and soft.)

I always love the cabbage dish although I am not sure what it is called. I’m also not sure what they do with it but it has a great flavor, slightly sweet and delicious flavor that soaks right into the thoroughly cooked vegetable.

Other buffet items have included Alicha Doro Wet, which, according to their menu, consists of chicken drum sticks and hard boiled eggs in a wonderful broth of “spiced and purified butter, garlic, tomato, turmeric, and onion.” I’m pretty sure that I’ve also had the Minchet Abish-Alicha Wet, which is a dish of minced meat “stweed in spiced and purified butter, onion ,turmeric, tomato paste, and garlic.”

For vegetarian lovers, I don’t think can go wrong with the cabbage but there is also the Gomen, which is a dish of chopped “and boiled collard greens cooked with olive oil, onion, ginger, garlic, and jalapeno.”

All in all, this is a terrific place with friendly service and excellent food.

(Images by AG)

Dahlak

Dahlak Restaurant & Bar
4708 Baltimore Ave.
Philadelphia, PA
(Visit their website!)

This restaurant is situated amidst a bunch of other African restaurants in this cute Philadelphia neighborhood on Baltimore Avenue. The inside was a bit dark at night so I couldn't take any pictures. Most of the seating areas are traditional - short, backless chairs and basket-like tables.

I was with a bunch of friends and one commented that it was odd that an Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurant would have Italian food. Of course, we came to the historical reason for this at about the same time and it was a pretty funny bit of dark humor. Do most Ethiopian restaurants have spaghetti?

We ordered a bunch of dishes. The fish of the day was quite good. I'm not sure what fish it was but it was cooked with garlic, onions, and spices. Someone else ordered the chicken tibs, which were OK but not spectacular. the lamb chops (bite sized) were OK too much they might have been better if we didn't have to watch for the bones. The injera was OK too although not spectacular. The food, overall, was decent enough but I had a bit of a problem with the price. So, there were four of us and we ordered four dishes. All the food came on one tray and the presentation was typical of Ethiopian restaurants. But there seemed to be too little of it. At the end, after having consumed much of the injera on the bottom, we were still somewhat hungry. Was this Ethiopian food or tapas?

I think I would go to Dahlak again but there are also other restaurants in the area to try.