Ethnic Eat Dine Out at Red Sea Cafe

Sharing food and communal dining is coming back into vogue, but in some corners of the world (or city!), it’s never gone out of style. Ethiopian cuisine, for example, is perfectly suited for gathering a group of people together to bond over food. There are no plates, cutlery or pretenses.

It’s also a cuisine that is still relatively off the radar for most people. While I have a friend who makes his own injera and several friends who are die-hard fans, I also get enough blank looks when I talk about Ethiopian food. For these reasons, I knew it would be perfect for the second Ethnic Eats dine out. A while back a group of us descended on Cafe Kathmandu for Nepalese food and since I love introducing people to new food and restaurants, I think this is going to be something of a regular event.

Our group converged on the Red Sea Cafe at Broadway and Fraser. There aren’t many Ethiopian restaurants in Vancouver, and they are mostly concentrated around Broadway and Commercial Drive. I had sort of landed on Fassil as my favorite, but Raul kept raving about the Red Sea Cafe and I knew I had to try it.

We had two vegetarian combos that were different on each end of the table; yellow peas called alicha; red lentil birsin; creamed corn, okra in tomato sauce, stewed spinach, and cabbage, plus a couple of lamb and chicken dishes like doro wat – chicken in a spicy Berberie sauce – and yebeg tibs – spicy lamb stew. I would have liked it to be a little spicier, but the range of flavours was appreciated and the heat was perfect for a group outing.

In Ethiopian dining you get a plate of injera bread with the stews or wats on top and some extra injera on the side. To eat it, you rip off a piece of injera and wrap up some stew in it with your fingers. When you run out of extra bread, you can eat the bottom layer that now has all kinds of flavours soaked into it. Ethiopian always ends up being so filling and split between so many people, our dinner came to a whopping $12 per person.

The service was impeccable and everyone was so kind that it felt like we were invited over to someone’s house for dinner. I think I’ve been to all the Ethiopian places in Vancouver now, but I still have not experienced a coffee ceremony, so I’ll have to circle back around and see which of these does that best.

Where should we go for our next outing? I’m thinking it might be time for dim sum, or a good Indian dinner. Join the Facebook page for updates.

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Red Sea Cafe
670 East Broadway, Vancouver