Let’s say you’ve gone to war in the mountains. You and your men have a chance for a breather. You’ve found a secluded spot, easily defensible, near water and not far from a few cowherds, from whom you’ve liberated one of their fattest animals. Everybody’s hungry and it’s time to make camp. The enemy’s not far, but you don’t know exactly where he is. He doesn’t know where you are either, but you definitely don’t want to attract his attention—so no fires, guys, sorry. We’ll just have to eat this cow raw.
There’s a glass display case in the front room from which bags of green coffee beans and the spicy jerky known as quanta are sold. The meat grinder is positioned here, and you can pick up your kitfo to go if you haven’t realized that just beyond this spare retail area there’s a full dining room and bar with roomy booths and flat-screen TVs broadcasting sports along with the horrors of the day. I simultaneously learned that James Comey had been fired and watched an MMA fight while carving morsels of raw beef from a fist-size chunk of bottom round, then swirling them through a mixture of mitmita, berbere-spiked awaze sauce, and a sinus-scouring mustard called senafitch.
But there’s really no feast quite like sitting around a platter laden with a greater assortment of what the kitchen is capable of—animal and vegetable alike—from beg wot, a cubed lamb stew, to doro wot, a chicken-and-egg braise fueled by niter kibbeh and berbere sauce, to atkilt wot, a dish of turmeric-tinged cabbage and potatoes. Gomen, mild cooked-down collard greens, provides just the intestinal scrubbing such a spread requires.
4543 N. Broadway 773-271-4300 selamkitchen.com
