Last Night: Queen of Sheba

The mission - delicious, not-too-expensive dinner for four pre-theater in the west 50's. I was tempted to hit a few old standby's - Basso 56, Uncle Nicks, but one of our party had been to Queen of Sheba before and recommended it. Darling-Girl had been craving Ethiopian for months. We tried The Ethiopian Restaurant on the UES - it was ok, but the food fell a little flat. Seemed like a good opportunity to try another Ethiopian.

The food at Queen of Sheba was delicious from the start. We first had the Dabo, which is a thick Ethiopian bread served with a fire-red dipping sauce. It was superbly tangy and spicy. We also had the azifa, which was a cold lentil + onion mash served with injera. We ordered a bottle of South African Sauvignon Blanc, which had a distinctly smoky taste that I didn't particularly care for.

Unlike most Ethiopian restaurants I've been to, where they encourage you to order a few entrees for the table, QoS actually charges a $5 per person sharing fee, which I found to be sort of obnoxious. For the four of us, we ordered 2 vegetarian combos, one taste of Ethiopia combo, and one other beef dish. The meal comes all served on a large tray of injera with a basket of extra bread on the side. All the dishes were rich and savory -- you can taste the slow cooked stewed flavors of meat, beans and spices - each little pile of stew with it's own special flavor. The platter contained beef, lentils, peas, chick-peas, collard greens, green beans and some other things I couldn't exactly identify.

I'd say the food was definitely richer and more flavorful than "The Ethiopian Restaurant". D-G didn't notice the difference. Zagat rates Queen of Sheba at a 23 for food, which frankly seems a bit high. But it's probably the best the best Ethiopian I've had in the city so far, so I guess it makes sense that it would be top-rated in its cuisine.

One of the biggest problems with the restaurant was the service -- and the decor wasn't so great either. Zagat agrees - they rate Decor and Service both in the mid-teens. Darling-Girl arrived last and I had to get up and go to the bar to ask for a wine glass for her and she didn't receive a glass of water (despite specifically asking for one) until after we were done eating. Instead of getting the two vegetarian meals we ordered, we got two meat meals and only one vegetarian. The decor was rather plain, and frankly, a little bit dangerous. A napkin on the table next to us was about 2 seconds from catching on fire from a candle (I saved the day) and there was a very sharp edge of broken glass on our table-top. The table decoration was a laminated paper print-out of an African cloth... not so classy San Diego.

The meal + wine (no dessert) came to $100 for the 4 of us. Which isn't terrible... but a C-note at Nick's takes you much much further.