From my personal experience, people either like Ethiopian cuisine or don't care for it. The aromatics and spice combinations used along with the eating with your hand aspect could be somewhat intimidating to some. However, the chances of anyone enjoying this cuisine can be ruined by poor service and long wait times. I used to frequent Empress Taytu some years ago and recently went back after a lengthy period of break. I'm very sad to have to agree with some of the recent reviews on the very poor quality service here.
I can clearly understand how for a first timer, the poor service can completely make the experience unworthy of time and price at Empress Taytu. This can happen to even repeat customers like myself. The taste of food hasn't change here from when I remember. However the service quality has significantly degraded here. Our drinks came out almost 30 min after the order, in stages and sometimes wrong. Our food came out almost an hour and forty five minutes after our order. We were one of 3 other parties in the restaurant - where one party had 2 people and the other only 4. The restaurant was only probably 15% capacity during the whole time.
Being the only viable option of Ethiopian cuisine in Cleveland, Empress Taytu could resurrect its past glory of excellent food paired with excellent service. They can also consider updating their interior decor while still maintaining an authentic cultural flare to the space. Some of the dated aspects could be replaced with some of the modern cultural items. The service quality most definitely needs to be re-planned. The kitchen needs to be better staffed with more quicker turnaround without sacrificing quality - they did it before, I'm sure they can do it again. The attentiveness of wait staff needs to be significantly improved and if some menu items or drink items need to be reduced to increase the efficiencies in other areas then such could be considered.
At present the price to quality ratio is far too imbalanced for Empress Taytu to be considered a 'must-go' or even 'good-to-go' recommendation in my personal opinion.