W hy is it that we're all so keen on utensils? In Ethiopia, hands become utensils as they pick up "injera," a flatbread, to scoop up everything else on the plate. We eat bread with our hands too, so why all the fuss about fingers?
During a recent meal at Asmara, an Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurant, we started to wonder: Maybe we've all gotten too cold and antisocial to share a family-style meal around the kind of colorful, woven, bowl-shaped tables we were seated around (the tables are actually like enormous martini-shaped baskets ... that you eat on ... err ... out of...). One can't help but feel sort of regal lounging in this Bohemian, understatedly lavish setting. I mean, doesn't picking up berbere-spiced chunks of chicken with curry-soaked "injera" sound too good to be true?
Looking at the menu, some of the descriptions are strikingly vague. Take "Kifto," for instance: "Traditionally served raw, like steak tartar or lebleb (very rare). The butter has special herbs that give kitfo its distinct flavor." Seriously, "lebleb", "special", "distinct"- the clarity is astounding.
But it was actually the ambiguous flavoring system that gave us pause. By no means does everything taste the same, but on the menu, sauces are mostly reduced to "red pepper" or "mild yellow."
"Um ... yellow?" - "Red! No, you're right. Yellow sounds better" made for some pretty tantalizing table talk.
Do not underestimate the gravity of these sorts of decisions. Our understanding is that Ethiopian mores dictate that each table share a platter of injera, family-style. The curries that adorn it may not look like more than blobs of your chosen color, but they somehow each offer a unique variation on this thick, heartily East African-spiced fare.
The tempo of the whole experience was set by our hostess. Her lilting Eritrean accent cooed as she explained the menu. We'd been walking around for almost an hour looking for what we felt was the right place to eat, and her strong, warm and - oddly motherly - presence assured us we'd found it.
Her restaurant evoked much more than any stereotypical exoticism associated with the distant shores of the Red Sea. That evening, the atmosphere's slow and soft rhythm in concert with the refreshing and unusual pace of eating, offered a retreat from the otherwise fast-paced Central Square that we didn't even know we craved.
For the person that orders a fork in a Japanese restaurant, there are more conventional, glass-topped, non-woven seating options too (and forks for the injera-phobic crowd). Choosing might be a bit of a crapshoot, but every dish is a winner.
There's something undeniably sensual about Asmara - could it be the finger-licking? (Winston was ravenous; he couldn't help it.) Just make sure you dig in without presumptions of any sort.
If you want to take them out to dinner, email Winston.Berkman@tufts.edu or Charlotte.Bourdillon@tufts.edu
