Someday I'm going to learn how to make that heavenly injera bread but until then I'll definitely be eating at Cafe Lalibela when I want Ethiopian food!
It had been probably years since I last ate here. A trip to the Washington DC area last year where Ethiopian restaurants are plentiful with delicious food, as well as the lovely Chris H.'s suggestion prompted me to try Cafe Lalibela again.
The menu has a wide variety of meat and vegetable dishes, with various options for combination platters. I highly recommend getting some kind of combination, and sharing a larger combination is even better because you get to experience more of the dishes that way. This time we shared a vegan combination platter and the Lalibela mixed meat/vegetable platter. In general I enjoyed each entree but my particular favorites were the tikil gomen (cabbage, carrot, and potato curry) and the fosolia (green beans and carrot).
We ordered one of each dessert to pass around and share. The teff cake was rich and moist but slightly granular tasting. The mousse was very light with a whipped chocolate flavor. The tres leches cake was wonderful with the milk-soaked lightly sweet spongy cake, and the tiramisu was a creamy coffee delight.
Service was OK. Although they had written the wrong number of people on our reservation it was easily remedied. As the restaurant got busier it did get harder to obtain refills on drinks though.
I'll definitely be back to try more dishes, especially since the injera bread is good for you, being high in iron and calcium. Injera, it does a body good!