East African Taste Restaurant 2405 Central Ave

East African Taste Restaurant
2405 Central Ave., N.E. Minneapolis 612-789-2805

The Lunch Explores a New Continent

Mombassa Dreaming

First it was novelty, then familiarity. For a few years in the early 90s, I used to frequent an Ethiopian restaurant, The Blue Nile. But then it moved from its Lake and Lyndale location to Franklin Avenue and I found my interest in the cuisine sated.

Not coincidentally, Ethiopian is also one cuisine The Lunch seems to have overlooked in our weekly restaurant-hopping over the two-plus years of this endeavor. But this week, returning from a hiatus, we decided to try the East African Taste, a relatively new place located on that artery of exotic and third-world grocery stores and eating establishments, Central Avenue. Associating East Africa with Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania principally, I was hoping, in fact, that the restaurant would be more than an Ethiopian restaurant. But, regardless, The Lunch expanded its horizons.

East African opened a few months ago, but it looks like it opened yesterday. The place was deserted when we were there, as if no one had heard of it as yet. The interior is spacious, with booths and tables spread out. A small bar, featuring a wall of glass and mirrors, is located in a back corner. Other than the few knick-knacks and artifacts of appropriate provenance—a shelf by our booth sported a lone small painted wood zebra, for example—the restaurant could be featuring any cuisine. This isn’t one of those places that give you the impression of having been thoughtfully put together.

Neither has the menu been given that much thought, or attention to detail anyway. One of the categories is beef and lamb ... and a chicken dish appears in it. Vegetarians will initially be delighted to see a number of entrées under this heading ... until they look at the putative vegetarian offerings and see the rice and chicken, the spaghetti with beef, the ugaalii (a Kenyan dish of cornmeal porridge served with goat meat). No cause for complete despair, though, since there are a vegetable stew, greens, lentils, and a vegetarian combo available.

Other than the rice, spaghetti, and ugaalii, all the dishes come on and with Oromo bedeena, a large spongy, thin, round bread which to my untrained palate appears to be identical to Ethiopian injera. The bread is used in place of implements to transport food to mouth and also as a base on which to serve the dishes.

A combo meal is probably the way to go (although I am curious about the ugaalii). We had one of these, #17. Perhaps the owners are computer scientists or something, since this combo is a recursive offering: it consists of items #10, #16, and #4 The last is a chicken dish in pepper sauce, served with hard-boiled eggs and home-made cottage cheese, but #10 and #16 are themselves combinations! The first combines three lamb and beef dishes (although one of these, a beef stew in pepper sauce, was omitted for some reason in our order) and #16 is a combination of the vegetarian choices.

All of this variety came atop a bedeena and in a large enamel platter. A salad is part of the offering too; this was unremarkable in its ingredients but came with two separate dressings already applied; one seemed an Italian, one a ranch, and I wouldn’t be surprised if both were out of bottles.

I found the food rather bland, except for the chicken where the spices had been applied with too heavy a hand. Some of the vegetarian dishes, the kale and the cabbage especially, provided some variety by way of texture. I was particularly disappointed in the lentils, of which there were two types but both had been overcooked. The cottage cheese was a nice touch, helping clear the palate, but I missed the berbere hot sauce that I recall from previous Ethiopian restaurant forays.

We asked for dessert but none was available. However, our request for tea (B) and coffee (me) brought forth a china service. The coffee was excellent—rich, a hint of chocolate, dense, and served with hot milk.

East African also has beer and wine, including a quite decent Ethiopian beer, Harar. The beverages are listed both in the menu and on the beverage card on the table, but I recommend ordering from the latter ... a glass of (the same, presumably) wine is $3.50 on the card, $6 on the menu!

As our regular readers have probably noticed The Lunch has been on a hiatus. The reasons are the inevitable summer swoon coupled with some personal family issues. For better or for worse we’re back, although A has a crippling international travel schedule in the next few weeks, therefore it’s conceivable that The Lunch may fall silent again. But be as it may, The Lunch found itself in the environs of Central Avenue in a relatively new restaurant that’s intriguingly called The East Africa Taste Restaurant.

I must confess my fascination with East Africa right away. My maternal great-grandfather was a policeman enforcing British law in Mombassa and I’d often heard about his exploits at my grandmother’s knees. Besides how many romantically nostalgic novels have you read about a middle-aged English coffee farmer, having failed in Kenya, returning to a cold alien England? There’s Out of Africa for those inclined to get their African fix from celluloid rather than the printed word. Snows of Kilimanjaro anyone? Or—if we’re venturing into Tanzania, after all it’s East Africa-- Julius Nyerere? The former President of Tanzania who foresaw the ravages of aids in his country, twenty years before the epidemic, by preaching that the height of sexual ecstasy is abstinence. Throw in the murderous Mao Mao Rebellion and you have one of the most fascinating parts of the world. It’s only fair that the cuisine of such people be exotic and inspiring. Well all the above would have been true about the East Africa Taste Restaurant had it been truly pan East African. Alas it’s an Ethiopian restaurant masquerading as a purveyor of East African food!

In the Twin Cities we know our Ethiopian restaurants well. There’s The Blue Nile (now more famous as a live music venue than a restaurant), Addis Ababa and the fabulous Singapore (trust me there’s an Ethiopian connection). Now we have East Africa, which with the possible exception of one or two dishes serves the same old tired fare.

The restaurant is located in a square, open looking building. Booths and open tables are available. On one side there’s a bar. I counted several flat-screened TVs hung from the walls – obviously some money, if not a lot of forethought has gone into this venture. There are the obligatory ethnic knick-knacks on display. We hope that there is a reasonable return on the owners’ investment but the bottom line was probably not helped by us being the only diners in what is a cavernous location.

Not realizing how the wind was blowing I asked for a Tusker beer a staple of Kenya but instead had to settle for an Ethiopian beer, Harar, which incidentally was excellent. The menu is rich in beef and lamb. There are vegetarian entrées but diners beware because by numeric reference (#11, #12) meat dishes are incorporated in some of the vegetarian dishes. Ethiopian style of eating is piles of meat and vegetables served on a spongy, doughy bread which is eaten community style by further servings of the bread being used to transport the little piles into one’s mouth. This may not be for the weak of heart or those given to checking the hygiene of other people’s hands. Thankfully A & I have eaten often enough from each other’s plate for this to be a problem. We ordered a combination platter with dollops of lamb, beef, dahl (pulse), and assorted vegetables. The food was too bland for my taste but I probably didn’t mix the right spices/sauces with the right little dollop. There was plenty of food and I had a tough time keeping up with A, who annoyingly remarked: "This isn’t really your thing is it."

Admittedly this isn’t really my thing but the whole concept of eating your plate is a novel one and I normally enjoy Ethiopian food. I had a delicious cup of spicy Ethiopian tea while A had an equally good cup of Ethiopian coffee. The soiree ended up costing us $28.00. A most equitable state of affairs wouldn’t you agree?