Last night, I took my ever-expanding palate (I can taste, like, four flavors now!) to Messob (1041 S. Fairfax) for Ethiopian food. In my quest to try ten new styles of cuisine in the next 800 days (pathetic, I know), I have gone to great lengths to seek out new and exciting dishes that will hopefully make me forget all about how much I love pizza and bagels and eggs. Surely there have to be more foods out there that I will enjoy, right? That’s the whole point of these food review posts. I’m trying my damnedest to not sound like a jackass when I’m talking to people about my poor eating habits and poorer food vocabulary.
I had high expectations for the meal. When Nicci and I went to the Ngoma (5358 Wilshire Blvd) East/West African restaurant in May, we were looking specifically for non-Ethiopian fare. This is because I’m a non-conformist, so if everyone else is talking about how great Ethiopian or Moroccan or Tunisian food is, I’d rather try something from Southern Africa or Senegal. Ngoma was great in that regard. Of course, I was acting like an African food elitist without ever having tried Ethiopian food, Moroccan food or Tunisian food. So, what the fuck do I know? Maybe all those other people are right, and Ethiopian food is the most incredible African cuisine imaginable. Since I would never know whether my Ethiopian-bias was warranted without ever having sampled the food, I figured it was time to suck it up and quit acting like a worried little bitch who’s afraid of trying new foods.
The atmosphere was quite like that of Ngoma. The decor was similar, as were the traditional seating arrangements. African folk art and maps of the continent graced the walls, the napkins were folded into intricate shapes, and local (by Ethiopian standards) music was piped through the room. At the rear of the dining area there was a bar area and a small window into the kitchen.
Nicci ordered kitffo, and I ordered the siga wot. The service was quick, and our waitress was courteous. When the food arrived, we asked that it all be mushed together in the center of our plate. That’s not a technical term, and in fact we didn’t ask that the food be mushed together, we just asked that it be placed on the same plate. I don’t know why I even wrote that.
The plate was arranged as follows. A large piece of injera (think of it as a spongy tortilla) was laid flat on the plate. At each end there was a house salad and a bit of tomato fit-fit (a sort of mashed injera thing with spices and tomato). Nicci’s kitffo was already on the injera, and my siga wot was spooned from a separate dish onto the injera. A separate bread basket filled with injera was provided for dipping and scooping purposes.
The siga wot was great. It was beef strips stewed in a red pepper sauce. Although it wasn’t quite spicy enough for me, it was delicious. The beef was well-cooked and I never once feared for my health. The kitffo was a strong contrasting dish. It was finely chopped, like ground beef, and prepared with spiced butter and hot chillies. It was definitely the more fiery of the two dishes, but the lack of any marinade, sauce or other culinary binding agent made it less appealing to me. It was basically like eating a pile of spicy chopped meat, which certainly isn’t an unappealing dish in my opinion, but it would have been so much better if it was somehow…not so dry. I don’t know what the correct term is for that, but I think you know what I mean. Jesus, I just almost wrote, “it would have been so much better if it was somehow…wet.” I hate writing about food.
All told, I was really impressed by the dining experience at Messob. They made my second foray into African cuisine really comfortable, like a good proctologist, or something. I would definitely return for seconds. I probably should have ordered a combination plate. It would have provided a wider variety of foods, but I was also really full by the time I left the restaurant, which begs the question, “Why are there so many starving Africans when their food is so good?”
