Zed's Ethiopean Cuisine, Washington, D.C.

Will wonders never cease? Ryan actually likes Ethiopean food!

Mr. Order-a-Hamburger-at-Every-Restaurant and I went to Zed's Ethiopean Cuisine in Georgetown Wednesday with Ryan promising to try something "exotic" for a change (and I knew they didn't have any hamburgers on the menu). As we entered, he was quite enthralled by their gallery of famous politicians and actors who've eaten at the restaurant and then posed with the owners. I've always found it interesting, though, that most all of the politicians were from the Clinton Administration....do Republicans not eat African food?

I chose Zed's for us rather than some of the fun Ethiopean places on U Street or in Adams-Morgan because I knew that the sampler plate foods were considerably milder here than the sometimes-fiery and beri-beri sauce infused dishes at other establishments, as Ryan has a surprisingly low tolerance for spice heat.

Deciding to keep it simple, I ordered for us a vegetarian sampler tray and a beef/chicken sampler tray, which, as always, arrives on the same big tray for both of us to share. Most of the dishes were fine and at Zed's usual level of consistency except for the hard boiled egg and chicken leg dish (sorry, I've never learned the names for common Ethiopean dishes), where I found the chicken to be considerably over cooked, apparently prior to being stewed in the sauce, since the sauce wasn't scorched.

Ryan tried a St. George Ethiopean beer, but I don't think he liked it, since he didn't drink half of it.

As we began our meal, Ryan seemed somewhat bemused by the fact that we had no silverware. I had to explain to him the Ethiopean tradition of using torn-off pieces of injera bread to grasp the food and convey it to the mouth. He was still skeptical. He did, nevertheless, unroll his injera and launch into the feasting process with abandon.

Usually I don't have dessert at Ethiopean restaurants as they are usually Italian. Their neighbor, Somalia, was at one time under Italian control, so Somali food has Italian influences, including Italian style desserts, but I don't find them to be "authentic" to the region. Ryan wanted dessert, though, so I acquiesced. He ordered the profiteroles, which is actually a French confection made by filling small little cream puffs with ice cream and drizzling them with chocolate. Here, they chose to use chocolate ice cream inside the two puffs, and squirted them with whipped cream.



I got the caramel chocolate pyramid, which was a pyramid-molded rather plain chocolate mousse (no coffee or orange flavors) heavily dusted with cocoa. It was fine, though I never tasted the caramel. I think both desserts were okay, though, at $7.50 apiece, given the price point of the restaurant, were about a dollar too much for what we got, even realizing that there are other places in Georgetown that would have charged $12 for similarly-sized desserts.



For those of you who didn't realize it, Ethiopia is a land that a few thousand years ago was part of the ancient Egyptian empire and a region called "Upper Egypt" (since it's geographically higher than the northern lands around the Nile delta). I thought that made the pyramid dessert interestingly appropriate.