RESTAURANTS
Deborah Ross
GOD, [hate the end of October, beginning of November. So glad it's over. You know, all those fireworks going bang, bang, fizz, bang, BANG!, fizz, fizz, whoosh, BANG!, just when you are settling down to watch Pop Rivals, a programme so utterly terrible it has to be watched as opposed to, say, The Office, a programme so brilliantly good that it's almost wholly unwatchable. Now, that's all I'll say about telly this week, although I would just like to mention the BBC's Great Britons, and all this stupid fuss about whether you can compare Brunel to Princess Di. Of course you can. Plus, as I see it, Diana wins hands down. OK, a suspension bridge may be a wondrous thing, a magnificent feat of engineering even, but has one ever danced with John Travolta? Or worn a lovely backless dress teamed with Manolo Blahniks and tights with dinky little bows at the heel? Point rather comprehensively made, I think.
So, yes, the ghastly fireworks which wouldn't perhaps be so bad if they didn't come right on top of Hallowe'en which, as I think I might once have mentioned, is known in our house as the Ancient Pagan Festival of Turning Off All the Lights and Pretending Not to Be In. This year, though, I was rather caught out when, assuming it was safe at 10.30 p.m. or thereabouts, I went to put some rubbish out and was trapped midway down the path by a group of about six sulky-looking teenage girls with one crap witch's nose between them. I think it would be safe to assume that they were graduates from the Minimum Effort School of Trick or Treating. 'Sorry, girls,' I said. 'I've quite run out of sweets.' They took it well. 'Bitch!' they announced, before doing an about-turn on their top-of-the-range Nikes and sullenly marching off. I wish [ lived in a better neighbourhood. A friend of mine lives in a much, much better neighbourhood, where a group of girls who had been to the Maximum Effort School of Trick or Treating — capes, noses, flashing devil's horns, vampire blood, the works — refused her offer of a Bounty each. 'Our mummies don't let us eat sweets,' they said. 'Do you have any tangerines?' The kids in our neck of the woods wouldn't know what to do with a tangerine. 'Fresh fruit? What's all that about, then?'
Now, on to Ethiopia and, in particular, Ethiopian cuisine. Rubbish link, I know, but I am from the Minimum Effort When It Comes To Links school of journalism and, if I can't show this off every now and then, what would be the point of all the effort I've so strenuously not put in over the years? Actually, I didn't mean to write about this particular restaurant. I meant to go into the West End to meet a friend at somewhere quite posh but, at the last minute, she cancelled — bitch? — so I had to find somewhere else ASAP. So I asked around and was told by the mother of one of my son's friends about this new Ethiopian restaurant that's opened near them. She adds that she's had a glance at the menu, and it does a dish called 'Derek Tibs' which, she continues, seems as good a reason to go to a restaurant as any. I can see where she is coming from. 'I'll have Derek Tibs, please' immediately strikes me as something I long to say and have, perhaps, always longed to say without properly knowing it. I agree to book the place for us all. I'm glad now that I didn't go all posh and West End. I think I've made something of a discovery. This other mother, by the way, is with me all the way on Hallowe'en. In her house, it's even known as the Ancient Pagan Festival of Turning Off All the Lights and Pretending Not to Be In While Hiding Behind the Sofa and Not Making a Noise. Does anyone enjoy it?
The Ethiopia Restaurant, as it's so imaginatively called, is on Hornsey High Street, which looks like a shabby row of shops and partly is, but is also turning into something of a culinary hotspot, what with Mauro's (an excellent neighbourhood pizza parlour), Pradera (good Spanish), Le Bistro (superb French) and now the Ethiopia Restaurant, situated where the old Turkish social club used to be. I phone ahead to ask what time they open on Sunday evenings. 'You come for food and we're open,' says whoever it is on the other end, in fractured English. I'm not sure if this is how Nobu works, but it seems a pretty reasonable way of going about things.
So, off we go. That is me, my partner, this other couple and our sons, who play for the same football team, have played that morning and are ravenous. My son, in fact, is doubly ravenous, as he'd played two fulllength matches, one in the morning for his team and one in the afternoon for a Jewish team for which he is something of a ringer. I do rather love the Jewish team, and the way the mothers run on to the pitch midplay armed with jumpers, crying, 'D an i el/D av id/Josh/Jacob/S am ue 1/J us tin [blimey, how did he slip in?j, put this on. You'll catch your death.'
The restaurant is rather cheaply and tackily decorated. In fact, it's so cheaply and tackily decorated that it's almost blissful. MDF banquettes, artificial plants, reliefs of Egyptian scenes on the wall (don't ask me what these are doing in an Ethiopian café), as well as an astonishing — not quite sure how to describe this — sort of very loud, faux-marble lino decorating the walls on the way to the loo. We are, however, served by an incredibly beautiful, gracious Ethiopian woman, and then two. Sisters, it turns out, who share the cooking and the waitressing between them, and have, I later learn, been set up in business by their uncle. We're provided with menus on single sheets of photocopied paper. I think we can safely say that every expense has been spared thus far. (I don't think the loud, faux-marble lino is Osborne & Little, for example). The menu is a bit confusing for those who are not au fait with Ethiopian food, as I'm not, I always thought it was Red Cross boxes, anyway. But there seems to be no delineation between starters, entrees and side dishes, and there isn't. This. I now know, is how it works: everything is served with enjera, Ethiopian soft bread. Actually, it's less like bread, more like a huge lemony pancake that comes on a plate — a massive plate, a plate the size of a tractor tyre. Then the dishes you've ordered are brought to the table as and when they are ready, and tipped on to the enjera, which you then tear up and use as a sort of edible scoop. Of course, the two boys are horrified. 'Eat with our fingers? Not us?' Only teasing.
The food takes its time. An hour or so. This is a long time to wait, especially with hungry boys. Where is the food? WHERE IS THE FOOD?' I would have minded, but the sisters are so warm and lovely — We thank you for coming to our restaurant . . . our food is coming to you' — that I somehow can't hold it against them. Eventually, the food does come, and keeps coming. We've ordered much too much, It's excellent, though. Totally excellent. I am mad for Derek Tibs, which turns out to be cubes of meat — lamb, I think — fried in a variety of spices until dry but with intense flavours. In fact, I'm mad for the whole Tibs family. We also try Awaze Tibs (a very hot, spicy dish of meat with onion, garlic and Ethiopian ghee), Yedoden Tibs (fried ribs of lamb) and Yebag Tibs (lamb fried with onion and green chilli). And then there are the Wots: Misir Wot, a spicy chicken stew, Shiro Wot, a chickpea flour stew (magnificently thick, dark and spicy) and even, oh bliss, Tibs Wot, a sort of mild meat curry. Oh, it's such fun the way it keeps coming and coming and the way you eat the plate, so to speak. Then the kids are brought ice-creams and a big bowl of popcorn, even though we haven't requested them and even though we are not charged for them. The coffee, by the way, is magnificent, the beans having been roasted on the premises.
The Ethiopia Restaurant is new, barely two months old, and I've no idea if it will survive or not. But I truly hope so. I think what it lacked in terms of speed and decor was more than compensated for by the hospitality, the wonderful cooking, its charm and cost. It was £68 for the six of us which, if you knock off the wine (£32). comes to £7 a head for more than we could eat. Good value or what?
So, that's it for this week. I hope to be better organised next time. One last word on this Brunel/Princess Di business. What, you may wish to ask yourself, did he ever do for British fashion? Quite...
Ethiopia Restaurant, 34 High Street, Hornsey, London N8; tel.. 020 8348 7088198.
Previous page
