Etete

This one might be underwhelming and I intend to have more photos than paragraphs. This is not to say I did not enjoy the dinner I shared with Wendy at Etete (on the top 100) at 9th and T on Sunday. Instead, I forgot to take pictures of two thirds of our dishes, plus we shared an entree, which clearly means less plates. And, they don't serve dessert and we got water. I might be insensitive if I used the line from "When Harry Met Sally..." when he recounted what he told his date at an Ethiopian restaurant: "I didn't know that they had food in Ethiopia. This will be a quick meal. I'll order two empty plates and we can leave."

Wendy, admirably, indulges me in ethnic food getting: our last outing was Persian food in Clarendon, walking to Georgetown for a belly dancing show, and then returning on foot to Clarendon for gelato. We've had kabobs in shady cabbie-frequented joints and Greek foods at festivals. So, at Etete we had our two salads, delicious but rather quotidien tomato salads with a nice vinaigrette. I have no salad photos, but here's the interior.


Then, we got our forks, injera.


For dinner, we used the injera to grab and sop up the gomen (collard greens), tekil gomen (cabbage and carrot), yemisir kik wat (red lentils, my favorite), and yeataklit wat (carrots, potato and string beans, although I don't remember the beans) and a cabbage/tomato/jalapeno pepper salad. They were all delicious, but the red lentils was the only dish that seemed to stand alone with entree-like flavor and fortitude.

It was delicious enough, but I imagine we could be faulted for not finding it more interesting since we ordered so little. Or, cynically, because the food wasn't that dynamic. But at least we rendered the plate empty rather than it coming that way. Plus, it's restaurant week and three dishes should be sufficient for the 30 or so that will follow this week.