31. The Queen of Sheba - Ethiopian food, 2/18/11

The Queen of Sheba on MLK may be considered the best Ethiopian food in Portland. It definitely is a place I would not have gone if it had not been highly recommended to me. An old converted store, this is a musty old building, with a hole in the wall feel. There is a front room with a few tables, the coolers and a cash register, a second room behind has about six smaller tables, and another darker room and full bar around the corner.

According to Ethiopian folklore and the Old Testament, Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, made the arduous journey from Tigre in Northern Ethiopia, across the desert and the Red Sea to visit King Solomon. When she returned, she gave birth to their son, Menelik, who Ethiopian leaders up to the time of Haile Selassie claimed as an ancestor. Now it seems every major city has a restaurant named after the queen.

Many different Ethiopian dishes are available. Pronouncing the names was next to impossible for us. Fortunately everything is numbered making it a whole lot easier to order. Just try saying “Tsebhi Kintti-Shara” or “Alicha Tibssi Kintti-Shara” and you will see what I mean. The menu is about 50% vegetarian with the rest made up of beef, lamb, and chicken dishes.

Once you have worked your way through the ordering process, the food comes on one large communal platter that takes most of the table space. The tray is lined with Injera with the food piled in sections on top. Injera is a spongy traditional flatbread made with fermented tef — a tiny grain native to Ethiopia, and doubles as cutlery – no forks here! You tear off a bit and use it to pick up a dollop of food with your right hand. This flatbread takes a bit of getting used to. Its texture reminds me of old foam-packing material used many years ago. It is not that I did not like it...it is just that it was a new food experience. It does not have a lot of flavor except for being slightly sour, rather it is a vehicle to get the food from plate to mouth. As the meal progressed, the Injera soaked up flavors from the food resting on top of it greatly improving the experience.

The food is dominated by two different spice mixtures common in Ethiopian food. The first is a combination with Alicha, a complex sauce made from chopped ginger, garlic, onion, fenugreek, cumin, basil, cardamom, oregano, and turmeric giving an amazingly fragrant aura to the dishes. The second is Berbere, a piquant combination of wine, cumin, clove, cardamom, turmeric, allspice, fenigreek, ginger, chili, and garlic. Most of the dishes made use of one of these two spice mixtures.

Melissa and I chose Yedero Wet – a lemon-washed chicken leg in berbere sauce topped with a hard-boiled egg, the house salad with fresh lemon dressing, lentils with spices, and Atakilt Kilike Alicha - a variety of cabbages, carrots, green beans, and other vegetables sauteed in aromatic spices, all served atop the Injero bread. This is not your grandmother’s cooking!

Overall, the food is aromatic and complex spices and tastes explode in the mouth. Dishes here are spicy but achieve an excellent of balance, never masking the subtle flavors or leaving your mouth scorched.

The Injera bread takes some getting used to. I know it is part of the culture and the whole experience, but I kept wishing I could skip it and just use a fork. Queen of Sheba was a place I would go to more for the novelty of the experience, and the experience was fun. Thanks Melissa for introducing me to it.