Normally, I prefer the vegetarian spreads at Ethiopian restaurants, but I realized at Dukem that that’s probably because I had never had really good Ethiopian cuisine before. Both the meat and the vegetarian selections were delightful. We chose a combination platter that included lamb wot (spicy homemade lamb stew), doro wot (chicken stew simmered in ginger sauce with garlic onion and herbal butter served with boiled egg), minchet abesh (finely chopped lean ground beef braised in milled ginger and garlic sauce), beef tibs (cubed tender beef fried with onion, rosemary and jalapeno pepper), spicy split lentils, greens, cabbage, salad and potato in spicy sauce. And as if that weren’t enough, we added an order of goden tibs (beef short ribs marinated in special Dukem sauce, with onion, tomato, garlic and jalapeño). This was a mistake because not only was there just the right amount of food in the combination platter, but the short ribs turned out to be a bit tough and not as juicy as imagined.

Photo credit: Meghan Colson