No Ethiopian meal is truly complete without injera, a springy, sourdough-like flatbread as big as a vinyl record but floppy, like a thick crêpe.
Once it's stretched out on a plate, stewed meats and vegetables, shaped into mounds no bigger than the palm of your hand, are arranged on top — almost like a pinwheel. Smaller injeras, tightly wound like towels, are provided, too. Unfurl one. Tear off a piece and pick a mound, then pinch.
Where to start doesn't matter. Especially when the tibs, kitfos and wots (sautéed meats, beef tartare and stews) are so forthrightly flavored yet well-balanced as they are at two of my favorite Ethiopian restaurants, Bolé Ethiopian Cuisine and Adama Restaurant. Both hew closely to what I'm told — and convinced — is traditional, but each charts its own path.
Adama's path is all about pronounced textures and flavors, more so than at other Ethiopian establishments. An example: meats that don't yield as much as they do elsewhere, yet resonate so deeply with spices that I'm convinced it simmered for days.
During my most recent visit to the Columbia Heights restaurant, the drumstick in doro wot, a chicken stew, held its appealing chew even as the oils, red from chile and paprika-forward berbere, soaked right to the bone. Tibs, often a stir-fry of rubbery, thumb-sized nibs of beef, peppers and plenty of spices, were elegantly prepared drier than its traditional preparation — each tib was sealed with char — and redolent of rosemary. And I could taste the venison promised in alicha wot, a warm, spiced curry made with the game animal.
Adama's chef-owners, brothers Teshite and Miesso Wako, are not shy about acidity. It explains why their gomen, or collard greens, has an unexpected bite, vibrating with so much bitterness that it puckered my lips whenever I took a bite. No matter — especially when background notes of cardamom, cumin and cayenne fade in. So does the atakilt wot, a spiced cabbage not unlike sauerkraut.
I marveled more at Adama's beets, not just because they were diced more finely than a typical key sir, but because of how fragrant (from mustard seeds, fenugreek and lemon) and indulgent it was: like creamed corn, only brighter.
In fact, I found myself taking swipes of the beet without injera — a real crime. Especially if you believe that Adama's flatbread is the finest in town. Distinct, for certain: a lemony sourness that persists; thinner and paler than mostly everything else I tried. Tellingly, the taste is the mark of teff, a type of cereal grain that's found only in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
