Ethiopian Food

Last night I went to an Ethiopian restaurant with about 15/20 other folks to have a cross-cultural experience. Basically you sit in groups of 5 or 6 around this small circular table at which your food will be served. It looked like a woven basket type of table. We opted to order from an Ethiopian menu that had no English on it so that we would experience what it was like to be in a foreign country with no help from others. We instructed the waitresses not to speak English to us until after we received our orders. It was quite an experience and we all managed to communicate with clucks, moo's, baaa's, and other noises and hand signs so that none of us ordered goat entrails or the like. (In fairness to the restaurant I don't believe they were a menu item, but we weren't sure as we ordered) When they bring your food out they set a larger circular serving platter on top of the woven basket table and place all the food on it so that you share with your neighbor what you are eating. Oh yeah, one other thing. There were no utensils. No safe knife and fork and spoon to use for eating. They had this really thin, spongy bread that you picked everything up with. It was a great experience and the food was awesome as well. We had beef, chicken, lamb, and salmon at my table and all of it was fantastic. I did get one really hot jalapeno in my beef which lit me up pretty good but that was fine. We also had a genuine Ethiopian coffee ceremony afterwards that was great too. Overall it was a very good experience and I look forward to doing it again with other friends soon. Anybody want to come along? Here is a link to the one we ate at in Atlanta.

http://www.qsheba.com/Welcome.html