Africana Cafe

Tena Yistilign, Ethiopia!

(Amharic for, Hello)

We here at MenuManiacs HQ have been looking forward to trying one of Colorado's many Ethiopian restaurants for a while now.  Over the last few years, we have noticed an increase in this type of cuisine, and we were ecstatic to try the winner of The A List's City of Denver Best Ethiopian Restaurant for 2012. 

The Africana Café is located in the South Park Hill Area near the corner of Colorado Boulevard and East Colfax Avenue.  It is a quaint, open space with no fussy decor, and they can accommodate both small and larger parties.

The food at The Africana Café was served traditionally which means it was with ourhands.  The Ethiopian people are known for feeding each other by a process called Gurshal.  The more they love a person, the more they feed them.  Well, apparently they absolutely ADORED us.  We had a lot of delicious food and it was an absolute treat to learn about this wonderful culture from the equally wonderful staff who moved to Colorado directly from Ethiopia.

They offer a full bar including several Ethiopian beers.  We did partake of their Honey Wine, or Tej, the national drink of Ethiopia.  Dating back to the fourth century, it is more of a mead than a true wine, it is incredibly sweet.

Chechabsa

The menu includes Appetizers, Breakfast, Lunch/Dinner, and Vegetarian dishes.  Ethiopian cuisine is known for being very healthy and mainly consists of sautéed meats and stews. 

For appetizers, we tried the Sambusa, a fried pastry stuffed with lentils and served with fresh honey.  The pastry was  delicate and the sweetness of the honey mixed with the mealy texture of the lentils.

Sambusa

Chechebsa is one of the few Ethiopian dishes that is traditionally eaten using a fork or spoon.  It is a special African bread seasoned with spicy butter and red pepper then topped with sour cream.  This was an interesting dish that had a kick to it.  It tasted  like battered, spicy, potato chips. 

Luckily, Africana had a couple combo meals on the menu that allowed us to try small portions of a few dishes.  The first was the Banatu Special.  This contained Quanta Firfir, Kitfo, Gomen, rice, and Ibe - a homemade cottage cheese.  Quant Firfir are jerky beef bits cooked with onions, garlic, hot spicy pepper and butter and mixed with Injera bits.  Gomen is a vegetarian combination of cabbage, carrots, onions, and turmeric.  Kitfo is freshly chopped tenderloin beef cooked with herbal butter and spices.  It is traditionally served raw; however, they will cook the meat if you prefer.  We were not emotionally ready to eat raw meat at this time so we wimped out and had it cooked. 

The Meat Combination was the other choice of the evening.  This was a combination of Doro Wot (chicken stew), Zigni (Beef with spices), and Yebeg Alicha (lamb stew).

Both dishes were served on a large, family style platter and covered with what our server called a Masob or handmade wicker cover.  The meal is served with Injera which is a spongy, textured, sourdough bread that is made from teft flour.  The texture of the bread was similar to a pancake. Ethiopians use this bread as a way to scoop up the ingredients from the platter.

The Africana Café does not offer desserts but they do offer a traditional Ethiopian Coffee Ceremony.  This is a tableside preparation where the raw coffee beans are roasted tableside, brewed and then strained into an adorable clay pot.  It was presented to the table after incense was ignited and coffee poured.  The final result is a pleasant espresso with an almost flowery taste.  It was delightful.

Coffee Ceremony

We left The Africana Café with a greater understanding of both the culture and the people of Ethiopia.  We award The Africana Café a fork.  Thank you for all your knowledge and assistance with the menu.  You guys are awesome!

The Officially Unofficial Voting Legend
Take it with a grain of salt, we're not professionals.
	Awesome place, we’ll shovel more food in our face!
	It was okay. Not our favorite, but we’ll take another stab at it.
	Didn’t make the cut.