When the grand platters covered in injera hit one of the six tables at Tadu Ethiopian Kitchen, a dramatic pause silences the house. This is a meal for everyone, from the solo diner to a party of six. Be it lunch or dinner, the entire meal sits on injera, that thin, spongy bread that's an icon of Ethiopian cuisine. The portions can cover an entire plate and may later function as fork, knife, and spoon — even the napkin, when things get really exciting. Bitter as a grapefruit, injera begs to be covered in other flavors, instead of being consumed on its own. It's a utensil.
Ethiopians have been dining in this ensemble method, with injera as the base, for millennia. The style is both resourceful (starch and protein in one bite, no need to wash silverware) and community-building (an Ethiopian restaurant might be terrible for a first date but fine for a second one). It helps for patrons to know each other, but eating there is just plain fun. In tech-addled San Francisco, where couples text in mutual silence and conversations are limited to a certain number of characters, Ethiopian restaurants such as Tadu implore us to reconnect.
That said, sharing the lamb tibs ($13.95) isn't easy, as most people would try to hog them all for themselves. Each cube of sautéed meat is at home with sweet caramelized onions of the same dimensions, and soars with the alluring brightness of berbere spices and jalapeño. Not one morsel of lamb was chewy; each sported just the right gaminess, especially with the help of the accompanying sprig of rosemary. In the aggregate, a meal here is an exercise in seasoning robust meat deftly. The bone in the middle of the lamb tibs contains the tenderest, most prized meat, requiring some aggressive gnawing to get to. Not until I'd picked it clean did I realize just how much I looked like my brother's beagle puppy wrestling with a bone — but there are no rules when eating with your hands.
I may have gone to town on the meat, but Ethiopian restaurants reward vegetarians, too. Nearly every one of them has an extensive vegetarian sampler like Tadu's ($11.95), full of various spreads, dips and wots (stew-like curries), each covering that extensive injera acreage. Buticha, a cousin of hummus, comes on a lettuce salad. Azifa, a preparation of lentils fragrant with mustard seeds and jalapeño, wins big, while the Misir Wot (a lentil sauce with berbere spices) provides a nice dose of heat. In the end, Shiro Wot (a dark purée of chickpeas, ginger, and tomatoes) and the refreshing Alicha Tikil Gomen (with precisely cut, turmeric-stained potatoes and carrots with fresh cabbage) draw the most attention. The sautéed collard greens, known as gomen, are fine, if lacking the careful spicing of their peers.
Spicy "Special Kitfo" ($14.50) adds the flourish of table-side performance, as the server mixes together chopped beef with plenty of spices, jalapeño, and melted butter, then scoops everything from the bowl onto the injera. And be careful how you order the meat: The kitfo needs the rare tartare smoothness to draw out its funk and spread out on the injera like pâté.
As Tadu has no liquor license, opt for a glass of telba — a frothy, chalky mix of honey and ground flaxseeds that could be a hit with the juice-cleanse set. (That is, if the onslaught of carbs from using bread as silverware isn't too much of a nightmare for them.)
Kitfo, wots, tibs, and injera are much better known in cities with large communities of Ethiopian immigrants, such as New York, D.C., and the two-block stretch of Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles known as Little Ethiopia. Not so much here, according to limo driver Elias Shawel.
That's what spurred Shawel late last year to follow his entrepreneurial spirit and solve the problem of where to find good kitfo. He opened a restaurant named for his grandmother in this intimate room, with walls covered in Ethiopian art and an open kitchen that takes up half the space, and there we have it.
Tadu is experiencing some growing pains, as when on one visit it took a full hour just to order, although the presence of one chef, one server, and a full house makes that understandable. In many ways, Tadu reminds me of Lers Ros' early days, when its popularity quickly exceeded capacit-y. Like that Thai classic, Tadu also sits on an "interesting" block of the Tenderloin, squeezed between two shops and guarded by window grilles that make spotting the restaurant tricky, even with Google Maps. Hopefully Tadu's opening will lead to bigger things for this street.
Once all that ripping and dipping is done, powerful Ethiopian coffee awaits. Linger over a small mug and some sticky baklava as that platter which was once entirely covered with injera gets carried away. It was quite the feast, and now it's just an empty plate.
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