Ras Dashen

I've been living within a 4 minute walk for over a year now, and only occasionally stopped by for drinks when the other Ethiopian restaurants were closed. But... the atmosphere and design of the place is very cozy and personal. The bathroom? VERY large, and always kept clean. As for the food... I ordered my first dish late last week: the first thing on the menu, Beef Tips. The menu is littered with typos all over the place, but the ingredients are easy to understand, and many are quite similar in description. Even so, don't let that deter you. Those basic beef tips were wonderful, and two nights ago, I got "green chicken" (chicken tips cooked in spinach). Oh my god. I've gone out of my way while living in NJ to find a Senegalese restaurant, and their lamb + greens were on point... but the portions were tiny. Not so here. Whether you order food on a plate or to go, the presentation seems to always be neat, tidy, and on point. Get in there the way the food is meant to be eaten. Screw a fork, use that signature bread to pick things up and sop up sauces. And if you need a good, solid trial run, you CANNOT go wrong with the Green Chicken. The spices are wonderful, the chicken is tender, and the spinach tastes totally fresh without being bitter in any unpleasant way.

I've only eaten takeout here once, so take my review with a grain of salt. I wish they had a veggie combo like Meskels, but didn't see it on the menu. Also, their online menu didn't have any f food descriptions, so I had to Google the items to know what to order. If you know Ethiopian foods, this won't be as much of a problem. The food was great. The whole family, including girls age 9 and 11, enjoyed it! You shouldn't need extra injera, since each dish comes with one extra. We bought 4 dishes, which was twice as much as needed for our family of four. But that's fine because Ethiopian makes for great leftovers!

The food is amazing and I highly recommend the veggie combo, especially paired with the beef tibs. We came here for the first time a few days ago and came back two days later for dinner again because we couldn’t stop raving about it. They even went above and beyond because of our schedule to get our food to us quickly when we were in a hurry. Only negative thing I could say is the table size limits my ability to shovel such delicious food into my mouth as quick as I want to!