Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant
December 30, 2009
I’m staying in Baltimore during the Christmas break, but DC can’t keep me away from its delicious food for long! My brother and I traveled to U St to meet my cousin Albert who invited us to dinner. He recommended that we try an Ethiopian restaurant. Since DC has a sizable Ethiopian population, there were a number of good Ethiopian restaurants, he explained. We soon found ourselves at Dukem on U Street.
It was pretty crowded for a weekday night during the holidays. Luckily we got a nice seat by the window facing the street. I had no idea preconceptions whatsoever about Ethiopian food, so my brother and I just let Albert order for us. We also made sure to order the imported Ethiopian beers.
Basically, you get a large plate (or several plates) of meat, in our case it was beef short ribs. You tear off pieces of bread (called injera bread?) and use that to wrap the meat along with little veggie sides. And then there are little dips too, some kind of dark sauce. Make sure your hands are clean, because you’re going to have to eat with your hands. But any time you eat food like this, where you’re eating from a shared dish with your hands, it just makes the whole eating experience more fun. And it was the best thing I had tasted in a long time. I’m Korean, so I’m already familiar with the deliciousness that is grilled beef short ribs, which we call galbi, but then this meat was a lot more tender than a lot of galbi I’ve had in the past, and plus wrapping it in the injera and enjoying it one bite-sized nugget at a time allows you to appreciate the flavor the meat a lot more. And you get to wash it all down with an Ethiopian brew of your choice and still have the motor coordination to drive home, whereas washing down your galbi with soju guarantees an early night passed out on the front hood of your car. That only happened once, I swear.
