Sour fermented flatbread, slow-stewed sauces, an afternoon coffee ceremony in three rounds. Eat from a shared platter; tear with the right hand only.
The national dish is injera be wat — a wide, sour fermented flatbread made from teff, served on a metal tray with five or six stews ladled directly onto it. You tear pieces from the edge of the injera, pinch up the wat, and eat. There are no plates, no knives, no forks. Strangers share the same tray.
Tef, the grain it's made from, is endemic to Ethiopia. The seeds are the smallest of any cereal in the world; you would need a hundred of them to weigh as much as a single wheat grain.
Slow-cooked chicken in berbere and onion paste, with a hard-boiled egg. Served at every Easter, every wedding.
Hand-minced raw beef warmed with niter kibbeh (spiced butter) and mitmita chili. Order it leb-leb (lightly seared) if uncertain.
Ground chickpea stewed slowly with garlic and berbere. Vegan, hot, perfect with injera. The default lunch on a Wednesday or Friday.
Cubes of beef or lamb sautéed with rosemary, onion, and chili. Often served on a small clay brazier kept hot at the table.
"A little of every" — a tasting platter of six or seven vegetable wats: shiro, misir, kik, gomen, atkilt. The best vegan food in Africa.
Honey wine, served in a round flask called a berele. Sweet, deceptive — strong. The traditional drink of feasts.
Green beans are washed, roasted in a long-handled pan over coals, ground in a wooden mortar, and brewed in a clay jebena. Frankincense smoulders. Popcorn is passed. Each round is named, and refusing the third is the only real rudeness.
Coffee was first noticed, the legend says, by a ninth-century goatherd named Kaldi in Kaffa, when his goats danced after eating the red cherries of a bush. He brought some to the local monastery; the monks roasted them, brewed them, stayed up all night.
Floral, jasmine, lemon. The bean that defined "third-wave" coffee.
Wine-bright, blueberry on the natural process. Spicier than Yirga.
Dry-processed, intensely fruity, almost mocha. Grown around the walled city.
Forest coffee, balanced and chocolatey. The wild birthplace of the bean.