Ethiopian food
Jesse says as he's leaving "You want to go out for Ethiopian?". Sure, why not? I jump into taxi with Jennifer, the editor of the film here, to head to the 'center' of Jerusalem. We walk up the street to meet up with Paolo and Kurt. Jesse is missing. He's running late. About 5 minutes go by; Jesse and Brook show up. We walk a half a block up and turn down a small narrow alley of sorts. The whole group except for Paolo practically miss the entrance. You could easily blink and miss it. We turn in this archway and head up some stairs.

We walk in and immdiately I say, boy this is authentic. The ambience and decor looks like it could come straight out of Ethiopia. We are greeted in either Hebrew or maybe it was Ethopian. Hard to tell. I look around for the tables and chairs. Hmmm...I see chairs at the edge of the room, but no tables. The staff points to the chairs for us to sit where ever we would like. There are these weaved basket type things about 3 feet tall and about 2 feet in diameter sitting near the chairs. After we sit down, someone grabs the top of the basket lid and lifts it up. Oh...it's the table. The tables have lids. Ok, this is new. And the table reminds me of a small side table or drink table in a lounge....only made of straw and not very stable.

Time to order. Well it all looks very, ummm, foreign to all of us. We all gravitate to one thing, the combo platter. We order 5 of those, for the 6 of us.....or we may have ordered only 4.
Pictured here are: Brooke, Jesse, Kurt, Jennifer, Jami, Paolo, and me.


Then I notice our waiter is wearing a Chicago t-shirt. Ok...what are the odds that I'm in Israel and go to an Ethiopian restaurant down a small alley and our waiter is from Ethiopia....and he is wearing a Chicago t-shirt? What are the odds?

It comes out on a platter a bit larger in diameter than the table. No plates. No silverware. Just the platter and the food. If you look closely at the picture (click on it), the light brown along the edges is bread. Now when I say 'bread' this is not your version of what you may think of as bread. Far from it. Jennifer even told me before we headed over that the bread is unique. Well, that is an understatement. Here is the best way to describe it: it's the thickness of a towel and feels like a wettish sponge and kinda looks like it too. The taste: spongy with a vineger after taste.
Back to the food. How do you eat it with no forks or spoons? That's what the bread is for. You grab a piece of bread and then grab food between the bread. Words really can't explain this experience. So everyone is grabing bits and pieces of the bread from around the edges and under the food and then pinching food between the bread. As you can see it was a large variety of food to choose from. Mostly the food was spicy. The purple stuff was beets. This was my least favorite. The orange stuff is carrots. The yellowish stuff...not sure, but good. There are chick peas, and meats elsewhere on the platter. Over all quiet good. It's a bit messy and a true new experience that all should try out. Wow!