Shebelle Ethiopian Restaurant Cafe & Bar

You ever had one of the those days, where you go to work for nine hours and you’re bored and tired and all you want to do is go home and get straight into that kitchen and cook an amazing meal for some babe you’re trying to impress? No? Neither have I. And neither has my friend Doctor Evil. Thus, last night after promising to dazzle me with his culinary prowess (possibly with the hope of demonstrating further prowess for, ahem, dessert), Doctor Evil sheepishly renegged and asked if i wouldn’t mind going out instead. Fine with me: as long as *i* wasn’t expected to cook i really didn’t mind. Then he asks if I like Ethiopian. Melbourne’s funny like that: you can ask a question like «Do you like Ethiopian?» and fully anticipate a response such as «I really am partial to Nigerian or Namibian but yeah, Ethiopian will do at a pinch.» I mean you sound like a wanker if you say it, but no one in Melbo is going to argue with you on the fact that you’ve had the opportunity to develop such a pretentious partiality.
The great thing thing about taking someone out in your own neighbourhood is that it doesn’t matter if the place you take them is a divey crack den that also does a great moussaka, or a hole in the wall Chinese place with chop suey that challenges the boundary between taste sensation and orgasm: the very fact that you’re sharing your personal local treasures is a gesture that means more than spending $ 40 on a piece of one animal wrapped in a piece of another animal. My experience at Shebelle was just like this. The owner-​chef knew Doctor Evil by name and took a good five minutes out to attempt to explain to us the insanely complex but gorgeous Ethiopian script via the charts on the wall. He recommended us some Ethiopian beer (Harrar, $ 5, it’s decent shit so get into it– they also have wine, spirits and BYO) and took our order.
Food ordered, beer in hand, it was time to take in the surroundings. Shebelle is not flash (it’s in Footscray-​cray for heavens sake) but it has a definitely-​not-​ironic quaintness to it. Besides the intriguing «how to [know you’ll never be able to] write in Ethiopian» charts, there are some National Geographic-​style posters (complete with underage boob) and bamboo panelling on the walls. In another life (and indeed, another suburb) the bar could have been a Tiki bar, but by the grace of reality it’s not, and a small cluster of smiling cocoa-​skinned dudes sip beer and coffee at its edge. One of them is wearing an honest-​to-​blog Rasta hat, complete with real half metre dreads underneath, in a way that isn’t even trying to be ironic, and the look in this guy’s eyes suggests that he is indeed an authentic Rastafarian, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, you’re probably either underage or really sheltered and i feel sorry for you. (But if you want to educate yourself, watch Dazed and Confused, if only for a really young Milla Jovovitch playing guitar, that should clue you in a little bit. Also, get out more. Jesus.)
Food wise: tip top. Ethiopian food is eaten with the hands by means of ‘injera’, which is a spongy pancake type thing that i can only assume was created by God himself. These bready-​wonders come with every dish, and the aerated surface means they absorb all the awesome juiciness of the food. The style of the food itself is kinda «African fusion», incorporating authentic Ethiopian with Mediterranean and Moroccan. They do everything from soup to dessert, incl salad, with meat, fish and poultry plus heaps of veg options. In fact, the vegetarian dishes are the star here; we ordered the meser-​wot (Doctor Evil’s favourite, incredible spiced red lentils) and eggplant (rich, tomatoey and sort of Moroccan). Between two of us, with the injera (and don’t hold back on these because they’ll just keep coming until you say stop/​or a button pops off and clocks the waitress in the eye), two dishes was enough. Heaps. Too much. I’m seriously still in a bit of pain. I mean i’m kinda pint sized but i can eat like it’ll be illegal any day now (won’t it, though? all the good stuff is), and Doctor Evil is no rugby player but he has hollow legs or something. We seriously had half of each dish left over… but the champ that runs the place just chucked it all in take-​aways for us. Bam, lunch today taken care of. Also maybe dinner tonight. And the rest the cat can have. Or maybe not… actually you know what i don’t clean out his litter tray so yeah, the cat can have it. But that reminds me, let them now how spicy you dig your food, because they will accommodate.
Oh and then paying, right? For two of us, including beer? Thirty freakin dollars. THREE-​OH. $ 15 each and i was waddling out of that place like Octomom at 37weeks. and you wanna know what else? If you go in a group of five? Twenty percent off your bill. Yeah. How good is that.
Magnificent.