Arrival in Addis Ababa (Thursday, January 26th)

Sadly, we arrived at Hotel Andromeda quite late, so the reception recommended we order pizza. They ordered a vegetarian pizza for us that Jonas chose from an online menu. He later said that the menu said Debonairs Pizza and that it sounded familiar. I told him that that brand was also present in Mauritius in our street in Quatre Bornes. We’d never eaten pizza from there, but it looked as soulless as the other Mauritian pizza places we did not like.

The pizza arrived and though it did the job of ending our hunger, it wasn’t a great pizza. It makes me a little sad that this was our first meal in what we consider one of the best food regions of the world. We washed it down with beer acquired at the hotel. It’s called St. George beer and it was a decent lager.

The first beyaynetu at Kategna (Friday, January 27th)

Breakfast was included in our hotel. There was ful (similar to the Egyptian ful medames), some spicy firfir, some kind of buckwheat-like grain, vegetables, and fruits for dessert. This was the best breakfast day at the hotel. We also had eggs with breakfast, which were nothing to write home about. There was strong coffee and absolutely delicious avocado juice.

The next day it was our goal to eat the vegetarian beyaynetu. Turns out we were in luck because every Friday is a fasting day. We ended up at Kategna Restaurant, which we had looked up before coming to Addis Ababa. It’s kind of a fancy traditional restaurant where the menu is also in English and it has an entire fasting section. A good place for starters.

We ordered the ts’om beyaynetu and oh my, we have arrived! It was perfection and we were so happy. It was quite busy in the restaurant, so the queue for washing hands was a bit long. We also knew to order Ambo water, which appears to be every Ethiopian’s favorite sparkling water.

There were quite some leftovers, so we took those home in a takeaway box from the restaurant (not free of charge). Next time, we’ll bring our own food boxes.

Yemeni food (Saturday, January 28th)

Breakfast at the hotel, then we went out in the late afternoon for lunch. We walked to the nearby Bait al-Mandi, a Yemeni restaurant. We had a cold mezze plate (hummus, baba ganouch, tabbouleh) with falafel and mulawah bread. Wow, I missed this! No falafel during our entire stay in Madagascar. We took some of this with us for later.

Then we went to the Zoma Museum, where we had a cup of Ethiopian coffee and some cookies. No popcorn or smoke.

In the evening, we finished our Arab/Levantine leftovers and got some Dashen beer from the bottle shop next to the hotel. We checked the prices for a bottle of local wine there, but it was really expensive.

Yetem delivery food (Sunday, January 29th)

Breakfast at the hotel was the usual. For lunch, we went to one of the traditional restaurants within walking distance from our hotel. Once inside, it was extremely tricky to communicate with the guy, because he kept pushing meat (doro wat) or fish (tuna salad) dishes onto us. I kept saying ye’ts’om and ts’om and fasting and vegetarian, but to no avail. Eventually, with great pain and effort, Jonas managed to order a shiro with a tomato (timatim) salad. It was good, but was it worth the pain only to doubt the food the entire time?

For dinner, we weren’t feeling like facing the outside world again, so we ordered food. We had tried different apps before, but they didn’t work. I eventually found an app called Yetem. We ordered food, but then a guy called my phone and told me that the restaurant didn’t have the most epic things I asked for. I asked him which restaurant that’s on the app he recommended instead for vegetarian food. He said Moyos Café. I ordered from there and then he called again to change the order because some things weren’t available.

An hour later, I picked up three boxes of food from downstairs and paid the delivery guy. We had avocado toast, garden pasta salad, and pasta with vegetables. It was really good but also a little too much, so we boxed it up and put it in our hotel fridge for later.

Indian food (Monday, January 30th)

On our last day in Addis Ababa, we wanted to go to OM Indian Bistro. Having completely lost faith in the Ride app, we decided to take an offline taxi to that restaurant. We told the guy where we needed to go, but he didn’t know the restaurant. I told in 20 different ways how to go there, from street name to nearby landmarks, but it didn’t help. He instead suggested we’d go to the second choice of Indian restaurant called Indian Spice. We ordered the paneer butter masala and malai kofta with some naan and chapati.

Since we still hadn’t figured out how traditional Ethiopian restaurants worked at this point, we were so happy to again experience a cuisine and restaurant format that we know intimately. I’m sure we’ll figure out what to order at Ethiopian restaurants during our short trip here, but so far we’re just not there yet.

If we’re coming back to this Indian restaurant or another before leaving Ethiopia, we’re ordering the vegetarian thali for a total feast.

Roadside restaurant (Tuesday, January 31st)

We took the bus from Addis Ababa to Bahir Dar. Our noodles were still good, so we packed them as road food knowing that it was unlikely we’ll eat them. The coach bus departed at the ungodly hour of 4:00, so we were too early to still have breakfast at Andromeda Hotel. On the bus, we received a fasting cake (“hule cake”) with a date that looked expired, but it was just the current date in the Ethiopian calendar. We also received water bottles. This was good enough for most of the journey.

At 11:30, we made a stop in a town called Debre Werq in front of a restaurant. Everyone got out to eat or go to the toilet. We ordered a shiro and two cups of coffee. This food really hit the spot. Outside the bus, there were lots of vendors selling roasted chickpeas, barley, and sugarcane, but we didn’t buy any.

In the evening, we ate at the hotel restaurant in Bahir Dar. We ordered tomato salad and shiro tegabino. This last one is basically extra thick shiro and it was mind-blowing. We both loved it so much.

Hotel breakfast + supermarket visit (Wednesday, February 1st)

The next day, we started by exploring the breakfast at Winn Hotel. This was absolutely the best part of the entire hotel experience as they had a lot of variety. Though on non-fasting days, there were also non-veg things in some of the buffet buckets. Gotta stay vigilant.

This first full day, we visited a supermarket we came across and bought a bottle of (expensive) Ethiopian wine. You may laugh, but I’ve never in my life spent €14 on a bottle of dry red and I’ve never missed out. We also bought some other things at the supermarket, like bread and cheese to make it a full picnic. Unfortunately, the Ethiopian mozzarella cheese turned out to be… quite dank.

We also went to the cute café across the street called Coffee Hub. We had a half Ethiopian coffee ceremony there in the form of two cups plus the smoke. But no popcorn, unfortunately. One day we’ll get there.

Three magical stews (Thursday, February 2nd)

The following day, we returned to Coffee Hub for lunch. Jonas already had rapport with the English-speaking owner of this café, so he could easily communicate what we were looking for. They decided on a dish with three stews, one of them a misir wot or lentil stew, a standard shiro wot, and a last one with the (good) crumbly Ethiopian cheese. It was marvellous and we took home the leftovers in two boxes for dinner.

We ended that lunch with a cup of Ethiopian coffee.