Gojo Ethiopian Cafe and Restaurant

This post is a bit late, but last week was a busy one!  Gotta love a holiday in the middle of the week that makes a Tuesday seem like Friday, and a Wednesday seem like Sunday, and then a surprise day off on Friday that turns it into a second Saturday, and... you get the picture.  In spite of our Friday off, we gathered up the JOPA for a post-4th of July family-style lunch at Gojo Ethiopian Cafe and Restaurant.  Suffice it to say, the crazy schedule put me off my A-game, so I'll apologize in advance for the shortage of pictures this week.

We were truly honoring the family-style approach of Gojo's menu as we had Ethan's sister Emily and Garrick's brother Alec also joining us for lunch.  Emily teaches at an international school in Rwanda and is home in the States for the summer, so we were fortunate to have a member of the group who is familiar with a variety of African cuisines.

Gojo offers a wide variety of traditional Ethiopian dishes, with both meat and vegetarian entrees served during lunch and dinner.  At lunch they also have a buffet available for $8.99.  Because most of the group had never tried Ethiopian food, we all opted for the buffet. 

The only way to buffet.  In the words of Dawes, "I want a little bit of everything"

The buffet included traditional Ethiopian bread, or injera, which traditionally serves as the eating utensil, as you tear pieces off a large flat round and use them to pinch bites of the rest of the meal by hand.  It's unlike any bread you've tried before, and well-worth sampling, although a couple of the members of our group did not like its tangy flavor.  Also offered were lentils, beef stew, cabbage, green beans, and a pilaf-like rice dish. 

Yemiser Sambussa, the vegetable version of the traditional Ethiopian snack

We also went with an order of yemiser sambussa for the table to share.  These are a flaky, triangular pastry filled with lentils, onion, and a pinch of jalapeno, then deep fried.  Gojo also offers a meat version, or yesga sambussa.  You'll get five small pastries to an order of the yemiser version, or four to an order if you go with the yesga.  In Emily's words, the sambussa is the "African Hot Pocket," and a dish that is readily available and widely sold as a street food.  While you will find them in a much larger size in some restaurants, Gojo's are appetizer-sized portions, and a fantastic way to kick off your meal.

Ethan and I also ordered iced sweet tea with lunch, something that I had read rave reviews of prior to our visit to Gojo (their espresso is also highly praised, but none of us tried it this time).  In a region where the population practically sweats sweet tea in the summer, Gojo holds their own in the iced tea department.  Unlike Southern sweet tea made with black tea leaves and super-saturated with sugar, Gojo's sweet tea incorporates a variety of spices that produce a beverage that I can only describe as "Christmas on ice."  Unbelievably refreshing and frequently refilled, a glass of tea perfectly complemented the meal-- it would have been especially refreshing if we had had any of the spicier Ethiopian entrees.

Overall, we had a pleasant lunch at Gojo.  Everyone felt that more options on the buffet were desirable, especially a greater variety of meat dishes.  Additionally, all of the dishes were served in their mildest form (many traditional Ethiopian dishes are very spicy), so the experience was far less colorful than we would have desired.  Both of these complaints can be attributed to our selection of the buffet in a restaurant that services a very small lunch crowd.  I hope that we will have an opportunity to take the gang back again, and order a family-style meal from the full menu. 

Gojo's lunch buffet is a great value for the price, and an approachable way to sample a new cuisine, if you've never tried Ethiopian food.  However, if you'd like to experiment with more authentic Ethiopian flavors, I'd recommend selecting a made to order entree (there are also a number of combinations available on the menu!).

Gojo scored a 3.4 overall, with mixed responses on plans to eat there again. 

This week, we're headed to Hog Heaven for a second round of BBQ (yay!). 

~B