Little taste of Ethiopia

We’ve been so eager to learn more about Ethiopia since we first made the decision to adopt from there. We have so much respect and appreciation for the people and culture already. It’s important to us that our child feels proud of his/her birth country, and we know we will play a huge role in that. During our first trip to Ethiopia, we will actually get to experience a night of culture with other AGCI families, which includes dancing, music and lots of food. We look forward to that night, but couldn’t wait until then to start experiencing a little taste of what is to come. So last Saturday we finally made our way towards Atlanta to eat at a restaurant called Desta. We read lots of wonderful reviews online, and we were not disappointed. Excuse the quality of the pictures. They were taken with my phone.

How cute is this little place? There is an outside patio which has a tree growing in the middle. Very cool! Sadly, Jonathan is not a fan of eating outdoors, so we settled into a cozy table inside. We were pretty giddy about being there, although we tried our best to hide it. Total FAIL I might add! It truly felt amazing to be in an environment that reminded us of our future child. It made everything we’ve been through seem worth it. Literally within seconds of being there, we were both fighting back tears. The people, food, music, and accents all made the experience special.

We let our waitress know it was our first time, so she helped us order some of the more popular items off the menu. We settled for the meat platter, which had fish, rib-eye, and chicken. Looking back we wish we would’ve ordered the lamb instead of the chicken. We’ve been told the lamb is amazing, and our waitress also said it was her favorite. Gomen (collard greens) and a little cabbage were also on the platter.

In Ethiopia, they do not use silverware. Instead they use injera to scoop the food up with, which is very spongy and somewhat sour tasting. The best way to describe the texture is like a pancake, but even that doesn’t really come close. It was little weird at first, but we both became accustomed to the taste and texture after a few bites. Ethiopians also only use their right hand while eating. As you can see, Jonathan is still learning that part…

He told me I looked like I was making tacos or fajitas. Ha! I guess we both still have a little learning to do.

We also treated ourselves to…

AND…

We wanted to get the full experience so we also ordered beer, honey wine and dessert. Thankfully they served dessert with a fork! The only thing missing was a cup of coffee (buna) afterwards. Not sure how I left without tasting some. It IS their signature drink! We left feeling SO full. I woke up Sunday morning still stuffed! As you can see, we really enjoyed our little taste of Ethiopia!

It was one of my favorite date nights ever. One I will never forget! We are both looking forward to the day when we can share the experience with our little one!