Lucy Ethiopian Restaurant, Cape Town 10-2019

Although South African food was high on my priority list, it seemed a bit silly not to seek out the food from other African countries. Interestingly there are only a handful of pan-African restaurants (like Mama Africa, Gold, Marco's) and even fewer specialty ones I could find. Ethiopian is something we've always enjoyed and so we ventured for that.

There's Lucy and Addis both nearby, and I chose Lucy because it was a little closer (and the Google rating marginally higher 4.7 vs. 4.4). For a while we were the only 2 diners on a Monday night. It's a nicely decorated setting full of African tapestries, decorations and faces adorning the walls.

The service was all smiles and banter - excellent hospitality worthy of the 15% tip I gave. The food is good too. I learnt about mitmita, the hotter sister of berbere although the waiter said none of the dishes had it in them. I think by the end what he meant was they save the mitmita for the Ethiopians, under the assumption noone else will enjoy or can handle the heat. That sounds like a challenge for next time, as the berbere was spicy but only mildly so.

- Buticha R40 - I've never tried crispy injera, but here is was deepfried to a crisp porous chip with the distinctive tangy taste and sprinkled with berbere. It was served with two delicious dips of blended chickpeas (although I wonder if it was yellow lentils) and homemade cottage cheese with sauteed spinach. Excellent and unique dish;
- Combo (select 2 half portions of dishes for the injera) R155 x2 - white injera lined the plate and was served with doro wot drumstick (excellent dark scarlet earthy spicy chilli sauce with an egg and a drumstick), yebeg alicha (very meaty-tasting lamb with garlic, ginger and clarified butter), misir wot (red split lentils in berbere with a less intense sauce than the doro wot) and mushroom (cleanly cooked with garlic and delicious). My favourite was clearly the doro wot, but the others were nice and complemented well.

I really wanted to try the special kitfo of beef tartar, but that choice was vetoed. Next time, with doro wat then. Maybe with some mitmita on top.

Lucy Ethiopian Restaurant Menu Reviews Photos Location and Info - Zomato