We Eat Ottawa - Horn of Africa

I have a new favorite restaurant, too bad it's in Ottawa and I live in Toronto!!!!

Last night for dinner, we had the veggie combo x 2 and meat combo x 1 with 0.5 L of house red and tea for $40 (including tax and tip). Wow!!! The food was great - the veggie combo came with lots of injera, good salad (lettuce/tomato), curried cabbage and three or four kinds of curry lentils.

The meat eater got a hard boiled egg, a chicken drumstick, maybe some beef plus most of the veggie dishes.

We all left food behind.

Here's the link to the website.

Ethiopian House

Today Ian and I went to our new favorite cheap eats lunch spot, Ethiopian House. It's the new favorite since the previous New Gen disappointment. I would classify the walk as a "death march", but at 45 minutes one way it really is not all that bad, especially when you can walk home in the always fun "Path" underground Toronto shopping mall scheme.



Here's the guy from their website holding the usual Ethiopian platter.

He actually seems to be at the place every time we are there. Not quite sure what the guy actually does. The waitress usually hustles around and does everything. This guy just hovers around behind the bar and relaxes.

Anyway, on to the review. I always have the veg lunch special which includes one little pile of each of the following:



EG 1. Misir Wot ...................................................... 8.70
Lentil Stew in berbere sauce

VEG 2. Sherro Wot ..................................................... 8.80
Highly-seasoned chick peas (powder) in berbere sauce

VEG 3. Tikil Goman .................................................... 8.95
Cabbage, carrots, potatoes, cooked in turmeric sauce

VEG 4. Goman Wot .................................................... 8.80
Kale or collard greens in mild sauce

VEG 5. Yekik Alicha .................................................... 8.80
Yellow split peas in mild turmeric sauce

VEG 6. Kik Wot ...........................................................8.80
Split peas stew in berbere sauce

VEG 7. Misir Alicha ......................................................8.80
Split lentil stew in thick mild sauce with seasoning

VEG 8. Atakelt Wot ................................................... 8.95
Mixed vegetables - string beans, carrots, potatoes - cooked in tomato sauce

VEG 9. Vegetarian Bayaaynatu .................................. 11.50
"Of Each Kind" small servings of the above Nos.1-8) vegetarian dishes
(For two) .......................................................... 21.90

Also included is some tasty salad and two hot sauces, one brown which is rather bitter and one fluorescent green which is alright. Meal usually includes some cottage cheese, but this time they seem to have forgotten.

This menu items above are actually from dinner, for lunch the combo cost is a mere $6.50 or something ridiculously cheap like that. Also includes as much injera bread as you can stuff yourself with. The veggie stuff is always tasty and therefore is always a challenge to keep Ian from eating all my lentil tastiness. He usually goes after my yellow lentil dishes, which is actually ok since I prefer the brown lentil stuff anyway.

Ian had the meaty combo which includes two kinds of beefy fun and some spinachy stuff which Ian likes and I don't. Slightly more, like $7.30 perhaps?

Total bill including tax and tip was a mere $18 or so! How can you argue with that. We stopped by best buy on the way home and with lots of sadness held off on a new TV purchase. The way I see it, we are actually $900 ahead on the day.

Actually $882 if you include the cost of lunch. Score one for us! We also walked home past the super duper auto show people and scored three cans of coke zero. Guess that puts us ahead $883.50 if you assume $0.50 a can. At that kind of value, how can you go wrong with going out for lunch? It's almost like we are losing money by staying home??

If you would like to make your own Ethiopian, check out hese web-sites. The first one has a injera bread recipe using buckwheat pancake mix, biscuit mix and an egg. I'm SURE that's how they do it in Ethiopia!

Website 1

Website 2

Website 3

Ethiopian House

Today we braved the chiliness and went to Ethiopian House on Yonge by Bloor St. We ocassionally go for dinner, but always end up spending $40 or so. We ordered 1 veggie combo and 1 meaty combo and with tax, tip and an Ian ice cream on the way home were only at $20 for a similar amount of food as the dinner! Not bad value.

As usual, the food was pretty tasty and the bread was fun. Some lentils, veggie and beefy item for Ian. Who likes cutlery...not me!

Washington DC

Trip was pretty good, a bit short on time so will keep it short.

Ian pretty much ran a tight ship and has us up at 6:30 AM and going strong till 6:30 PM seeing numerous attractions/day.

For dinner, we ate at Ethiopian once. They pretty much seem to be on every block, sorta like the TO sushi joints. Pretty similar price and taste to our usual TO ethiopian place.


Other than that, some OK Thai, pub food and Ian really liked the Peruvian he went to.

Ben and Jerry's was tasty as usual.

Ethiopian House

Ian and went for dinner tonight. Ethiopian House is just off Yonge, South of Bloor.

I had the veggie combo and Ian had the meaty combo. Pretty tasty, lots of injera (spongy type bread), lentils, spiced veggies, salad, 2 beef dishes and some sketchy cottage cheese.

We ended up spending $32.40 with both of us drinking water, so a bit more than we normally like to spend. I think the combos are much less at lunch, so that's our plan in the future.

A "very tasty" rating with a no thumbs up in the value department.