One of my favorite Ethiopian restaurants in New York is in a basement. It’s called Meskerem and it also has some of the best vegetarian food in the city.
Unlike India, Ethiopia is not a country with a lot of vegetarians. However, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, of which almost half of Ethiopians are members, has a strong fasting tradition. 180 days a year, that is half of the year, faithful Ethiopion Orthodox Christians abstain from eating meat. Ethiopia, therefore, has a significant vegetarian food culture, including both dishes that imitate meat and ones that simply make the best of the vegetables they have. I love Ethiopian vegetarian food and order a vegetarian platter whenever I’m at an Ethiopian restaurant.
Dishes on our platter at Meskerem:
1. kik wat: stewed split peas
2. tikil gomen: cabbage, potato, and carrot stew
3. buticha: similar to hummus; a mixture of ground chickpeas and spices
4. fasolia: stewed green beans with carrots
5. gomen: stewed collard greens
6. misr wat: spicy lentil stew
7. misr alicha: mild lentil stew
8. shiro: spicy stewed ground chickpeas
9. ingudai tibs: sauted mushrooms
All of these dishes are excellent, but my particular favorites are the misr wat, which mimics a ground meat dish in both texture and flavor, shiro, which is like the distilled essence of the flavor of an Ethiopian stew, and the mushrooms, which aren’t a part of the standard vegetarian sampler but which I always order separately whenever they’re on the menu. These mushrooms in particular are the best I’ve ever had.
Meskerem
124 MacDougal St
New York, NY 10012