When I walked into Meskel, I didn’t get very far. This 31-seat restaurant does not have a hostess, just a patch of floor space surrounded by tables full of ravenous diners. I stopped a waitress, got on the list, pivoted and joined the hungry crowd on the sidewalk.
“Make sure to wash your hands,” I told my friends because I knew we’d be using them to eat dinner in a few. Ethiopian cookery is served in mounds on a tangy pancake called injera, pulling duty as plate, spoon and breadbasket. This spongy-but-not-soggy base is no pretense—it’s what a bagel is to cream cheese—but a necessary part of the equation.
Everything about Meskel feels communal, from the large portions to the restaurant’s corkscrews, passed around among diners who remembered to BYOB or ran to the deli on Avenue B. Once seated, we started with the Avocado Salad ($6), which added said fruit to the standard House Salad ($4.50), a cold blend of diced tomato, onion and jalepeño dressed in lemon and oil. The avocado was fine, but the simple crispness of the original, sampled on a prior night, was just as good.
Gomen Besega ($10) makes me think of soul food’s so called “vegetables,” slathered in butter and spiked with ham. Since Ethiopians don’t dig on swine, these collard greens are mixed with garlicky beef. If my friend Mike weren’t rendered speechless by his first mouthful, I’m sure he would’ve said “the whole of this dish transcends the sum of its parts.” Ye Beg Alicha ($12.95) is lamb braised in turmeric, garlic and pepper. An inexperienced hand working with these spices could easily create over-seasoned mystery meat, but the kitchen has a gentle touch, so the grassy lamb flavor stood firm among the aromatics.
But the chef’s timidity with heat can misfire. Doro Wat ($12.95) is supposed to be a spicy chicken stew strewn with hard-boiled egg. Yet my girlfriend Wendy couldn’t hide her disappointment in Meskel’s tasty-but-tame version of her favorite dish. Too late, we learned that the kitchen would’ve given us extra berberé, a curry-like spice blend, to kick it up a notch. That’s honorable, but no substitute for New Yorkers who only try new dishes if there’s a pepper icon next to the name.
A Vegetarian Combination ($12.95) serves as a perfect side dish sampler. The Shiro Wat chickpea stew delivered the spicy kick that the table dreamt of. Fosolia tasted pleasantly of carrots and ginger. The entire vegetarian menu reflects the kitchen’s attention to detail, considering how easily lentils and cabbage can turn into gloppy messes in the wrong hands. Most of these dishes stew for hours, “Fourteen, 16 hours: We cook all night until it’s right,” the chef told us.
He had come over because he wanted to see for himself who had ordered both the Whole Fish ($14.00), a tilapia, and the Kitfo ($12.95), a raw, seasoned chopped beef that was also too mild, considering it’s traditionally made with mitmita, the insanity sauce of East Africa. The fish’s skin was scored to reveal succulent medium rare meat inside. It should’ve cost twice as much and been “served by a man wearing little white gloves and a bow-tie,” Wendy said.
Impressed by our table’s choices, the chef still said he wasn’t sure New Yorkers could handle true Ethiopian heat. I wanted to remind him that he was serving a population that battled for decades for the right to order from the authentic Chinese food menus; that uses the password “Thai spicy” to order the blazing curries that only natives were once privy to. Meskel, don’t you worry: Give us everything you’ve got.
Meskel Ethiopian Restaurant
199 E. 3rd St. (at Ave. B)
212-254-2411
