While I love and constantly sing my praises of Tacoma, there are a few things that I wish existed in the city (food-wise) that currently do not. Exhibit 1: a vegan fine dining establishment, a la Portabello in Portland and Sutra or Carmelita north in Seattle. If someone built it, I believe we’d most assuredly come. Exhibit 2: a single Ethiopian restaurant. If you’ve never experienced Ethiopian food but have restaurants nearby in your city, I urge you to visit one on your next evening dining out. Not all of us are as fortunate to have one so nearby!
We Tacomans venture to Seattle for our vegan Ethiopian, because as to my knowledge, Olympia doesn’t have one either. This just makes it an every once in a while treat for us, and thankfully Seattle is teeming with Ethiopian restaurants of varying levels of hole-in-the-wall-ness. I haven’t been to all, (there are approximately one zillion) but our favorites, Queen Sheba and Kokeb, are both lovely in ambiance, service and delectable vegan options.
As we frequent both of those locations primarily for our Ethiopian fix, we wanted to try a new place while visiting this past weekend. Yelp is kind of hard to wade through for a suggestion on this, because almost all restaurants have the same ratings and all have veggie platter options. So I took a shot in the dark and picked a restaurant at random in Columbia City: Lalibela Restaurant.
Lalibela has a whole page dedicated to pure vegetarian/vegan dishes, and they should be pretty familiar to you if you’ve ever tried the cuisine. If not, Ethiopian food is mostly composed of staple ingredients such as potatoes, onions, greens and lentils that all different spicy flavors. Gomen, Foskua, Misir Wot, Fosolia and aptly named Cabbage all don the menu, and my favorite way to eat Ethiopian food at any restaurant, (the veggie combo platter) gives you a little bit of everything on the menu, save for a few dishes. When you share with a friend, you really get a lot of bang for your buck.
The boy and I split this monster veggie combo, complete with warm, soft, sour and delightfully spongy injera. His favorite was hands down the Fosolia, and I was the biggest fan of the Gomen, (collard greens), cooked down with onion, ginger, garlic and other spices. I don’t even want to tell you how fast we ate all of this, plus our injera, plus the injera that the food comes on. It’s that good, and/or we were just that hungry.
If you’re in the mood for Ethiopian and are near the Central District, I think you should definitely check out Lalibela. Though we did pass about five other Ethiopian restaurants on the way up, you can be assured that the food is tasty and vegan at this cozy spot.
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Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant (Central District)
2800 E. Cherry St.
Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 322-8565
YAYYYYYYY! This is actually our FAVORITE of the many Ethiopian places in Seattle.
I’ve never tried Ethiopian food. Funny thing the first time I’ve watched the Simpsons in like forever was this weekend and Marge ate this veggie platter thing at an Ethiopian restaraunt and fell in love. Made me think about trying it. This must be the universes way of telling me to go eat Ethiopian food!
I hope you’ve eaten Ethiopian by now, Joy! It’s so good!
Ethiopian is one of my favorite cuisines ever, and is super easy to navigate as a vegan. Luckily, even though I live in a small city, we’ve got a very diverse ethnic population and thus have lots of great restaurant choices. Mmm, injera…
Nice! I’m quite envious. Tacoma’s a decent sized city, but sadly, not so ethnically diverse as to include a substantial Ethiopian population. And injera’s my fave!
I agree – we really could use an Ethopian restaurant around here. But my sense is that despite Tacoma’s general diversity, we don’t have the biggest Ethiopian/east African population. Hopefully I’m wrong about that…
Seattle has a bunch of Ethiopian Restaurants located along the east side of 12th Avenue, between Madison and Yesler. Just drive down the street and take your pick!
I also like Cafe Soleil, located at the corner of 34th and Union in the Madrona neighborhood. The owner is a sweetheart and will take you through each dish. Nice ambiance too!
Oh, this is great! I just found your blog and recently started a job in Tacoma, though I live in Olympia, so this is super helpful. I’ve only been to one Ethiopian place in Seattle (on Rainier Ave and can’t remember the name) so I’m glad to hear this place got a good review from you. Another to try. I can vouch that Olympia has no Ethiopian restaurants. Ethiopian is my sweetie’s favorite cuisine, so I’m planning a special date to Seattle to get his fix. We’ll have to check out Lalibela!
Wow, I never even knew this place existed! I haven’t tried Ethiopian food before, but I have wanted to for such a long time.
I really wish there were more restaurants that offered vegan food like this in Tacoma, since I’m there a lot of the time (I live in Puyallup).