We intended to eat at Cambodia's only Ethiopian restaurant before leaving the country in 2019, but luckily it was still here in Phnom Penh waiting for us.
A Culinary First For Some🍴
We actually stumbled upon this restaurant, happen to be staying less than a 100 meters from it. Sara Ethiopian Restaurant is the name of the place, located on Street 172 very near the riverside in Phnom Penh. As we are vegans, the dishes available at any Ethiopian restaurant weren't strange to the @kidsisters or @sreypov, who are Indian food fanatic converts.
We went with two stews known as wot in Amharic, both lentil-based and very similar to Indian dahl. I prefer Indian cuisine when it comes to stews and curries, but I was hoping the highlight of the meal would be the injera, a sourdough bread a bit like a crêpe, made from a native Ethiopian grain called teff.
Don't Hate The Injera 🫓
Sourdough is not anything my family is interested in, noted for the future. I was almost certain the injera bread would be a hit, but it didn't impress the @kidsisters or @sreypov.
The two dishes we ordered were tasty enough, but I think because there was no rice and they weren't fans of the bread, these dishes were a lot less appealing.
The Decor 🖼️
This restaurant had some of the usual Tewahedo Christian artwork I have come to expect at Ethiopian restaurants, and some photos of the Blue Nile, Axum, and other important sites.
Let's Scram 🏃
All in all it wasn't a bad experience, but the worst was the 15-minute wait after the meal, the owner apparently forgot us or something. Monkey-B's expression shows the despair of not being able to hit the road after having a fully belly.
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The food on that dish looks good. The one and only time I went to an Ethiopian restaurant in Toronto, I was so disappointed. I thought the bread was interesting but at that time I had never eaten with my hand. The lentil dishes that we got literally tasted like boiled lentils and not much more. We never tried Ethiopian again.
I love seeing you there with the ladies. Monkey B making faces all over the world haha.
I have eaten at a handful of Ethiopian restaurants where the dishes were extremely bland, but the majority of places serve dishes slightly less spicy than Indian dishes. I hope you give it a chance again if you find another restaurant. The only thing wrong with the place we visited was that the owner wasn't very attentive, but the food was satisfactory.
I can't tell if it's nice from the picture. But the Teff does looks a little bit like the Indian Thosai.
And the last photo, poor Monkey-B had to wait for that 15 minutes. But I also notice you've got a nice bicep flex there. It seems you've gain some muscle recently :)
I'm guilty of not taking any close-up pictures. We were so hungry that we'd eaten half of the dishes by the time we thought about Hive content. I still prefer dosa to injera, but I will always love all things sourdough.
Their faces showed a lot of despair or disappointment but were funny at the same time. The dishes you guys had looked really tasty for me. So happy to see you guys all together again and having meals! Take care always!
It was a pretty good meal. I've eaten at about 10 different Ethiopian restaurants through the years, and this place had the best lentil dishes yet, but also the most uninspired salad too. The main thing is the joy of sitting down with the family and sharing a meal together again.
Yeah, a table surrounded with your loved ones with a delicious meal is the best! Happy to see you together again!
Now that looks really tasty! yum! Of course, I'm waiting for dinner right now and haven't eaten since breakfast.
My son has a sourdough kit needing to be started in the kitchen. A grilled cheese sandwich on sourdough is his favourite meal in the world.
Oh no, that's a long stretch without a bite to eat, especially for a work day. I can respect that some folks don't love sourdough, but will never understand.
I love lentil dishes. Just about to cook some yellow dal tonight. That Dal looks a bit like the traditional swabian (part of germany) lentil variant. Your kids are like me, I hate it if I have to wait. Everything that has to do with dining out I´m very impatient.
I wasn't aware of any German lentil dishes, now I've got some googling to do. I was quite impatient too, but I didn't let the girls see that because they would've fed on my impatient energy.
Very famous dish in southern germany. looks like this. With home made egg noodles and a sausage on top. to finish it we put vinegar on top as well, sounds strange but tastes awesome.
I have to admit that I have walked away, once or twice ( let's make that twice ), without paying, after having asked for the bill and having had to wait for ages, without any effect. Not from a restaurant though but a terrace ;<)
Here in Cambodia the waiters and waitresses don't rely on tips like they do in the USA to complete their salary, so the old saying "the customer is always right" doesn't work here. Just the other day we spent 15 minutes explaining to a cook that we wanted veg fried rice without egg, a groundbreaking concept.
After we were positive he understood not to touch the eggs, he repeated muscle memory and sent us home with egg fried rice. After getting back to the hotel, a heavy rain began and we opened our food boxes to see the egg. I was pissed, drove back, and demanded new dishes me made. But of course this is Cambodia, and we know the owner of the restaurant has no active role, and instead the poor employees gamble each day with how much stuff to buy at the market. They would've lost the day's profits on our mistake, so we offered to pay all over again for dishes made correctly.
We received some abnormally light take-away boxes, and upon opening them at the hotel, we realized the new portions were 1/4th the size of the previous order, and literally cold diced carrots with cold leftover rice, only in Cambodia.
The food really looks so good. I wanted to taste that kinds of food and I am looking forward to it with myself. I always wanted to try everything, because I don't want to have regrets in the near future.😊
Ethiopian food is very similar to Indian, especially the ingredients and spices used, but I would say it's more mild. The bread is what's special, injera, like a sourdough crepe, my favorite flatbread on the planet, but not a hit with the family.
The menu looks strange for me, haha ... No rice no eating ... , that is joke for Indonesian mainly in my area where I live. Though we eat bread untill full , we will be still hungry without eating rice.
A lot of Ethiopians eat rice, but only the ones not living in the mountains, where bread takes over the diet. I need rice with every meal too, but there is one thing that can replace it, and that's a good roti, paratha, or other flatbread. For some reason I don't like to mix rice and bread in the same meal.
a comfortable place as a restaurant to fill a full stomach, I see your daughter monkey-B after she is full she looks cute with her expression. but it's nice to see you can come back again.
It's so good to be back, and I have missed eating delicious foods. The food in Suriname was very repetitive and bland, none of us liked it.
I ate at Ethiopian restaurant in Bangkok one time. I enjoyed it but found it a little heavy for me - I think it's hard for Thai people to not have rice at meal times.
It is a heavy cuisine, especially the bean dishes. I am the same way with rice when it comes to a meal, but because South Asian is my favorite cuisine, the only thing that can replace rice is some kind of delicious flatbread, especially roti or paratha. In Cambodia the slang way to say "How are you?" is to say "Did you eat rice yet?" Somebody once told me Thais say the same the same thing too, is that correct?
Yes that is how we standard greet each other - I wouldn't say it's "slang" but actually just a polite greeting. Because everything revolves around food here...:)
You're right, slang may not have been the best choice of words, rather informal I guess. The standard way to ask "how are you?" here is "you happy healthy?"
In Thai we say "Sabai Dee Mai" - and I guess the approximate translation would be "are you feeling well"? I think its very similar to Khymer which is not surprising as we are neighbors.
hi my friend @justinparke.
You have shown a happy atmosphere again,, I feel it, I wish you a long and healthy life, my friend,
It was a good experience overall, I always love turning the family on to new cultures through their food.
Are you all back together in Cambodia? Food looks amazing. I was looking at Kep on the map today and pondering post-covid travels.... 😊
We are finally reunited and back together again, although it will take years to financially recover. Hopefully by the time we're 50 we'll still be healthy and strong enough to keep working, because don't really have a choice anymore. I used to live in Kep and operate a Kindergarten there. It's a sleepy quite town compared to most beach places, and that can either be a positive or a negative depending on the getaway you're looking for. If you do stay in Kep, I recommend only visiting the beach during the day.
The national park has some guesthouses and hotels located within it, and the beach is still accessible. The gibbons come down from the mountains every morning and walk through the gardens of the places, it's a magical experience.
Your daughter faces sure tells it all . Where's my food 🤣🤣 i bet without it the journey cant goes on 😁
That last pic was after we ate. We were waiting for the owner to show his face so we could ask for the bill, but he was distracted with his phone and hiding in the kitchen.
That food looks really good.
And fill us up.
Thank you for sharing.
Lots of beans for protein, otherwise we never feel full. Thanks for stopping by my friend.
nice food please eat
It was really good, but the girls didn't like the bread very much.
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I love injera and good Ethiopian food - a shame you didn't get a good one. Poor Monkey B
Thank you, so nice to see new and different cultures coming to Cambodian to do business.
She waited too long for the bill.
It was really good, just had to wait too long for the bill.