Eating to Live on the Outside: Fasika Ethiopian Restaurant
As a Yankees fan going to bean town is almost a sacrilege, but sometimes we all have to make sacrifices. This week Eating to Live on the Outside “travels” to Fasika in Boston, Massachusetts.
Baseball loyalties aside, Fasika looks like a great place to eat. They serve food made with a variety of vegetables, like collard greens, cabbage and eggplant. Here are some good choices:
Ethiopian Salad
- Romaine lettuce, tomatoes, red onions and jalapeno peppers in lemon vinaigrette; nothing wrong with this, but I’d order the dressing on the side.
Azifa
- Lentil salad with jalapeno peppers, onions and vinegar; looks cool.
Tegabino
- Traditional sauce made from roasted legumes and Berbere; beans are great and musical too!
Yé-Misir Wot
- Split lentils cooked in berbere sauce; no problems here.
Yé-kik Alicha
- Split peas cooked in garlic and ginger sauce; I dig it.
Yé-Gomen Wot
- Collard green leaves sautéed with onions and garlic; the sautéing is iffy, but the collard greens are awesome.
Yé-Atakilt Kilikil
- Green beans, carrots, potatoes and onions cooked in a mild sauce; another good one.
Yé-Tikil Gomen
- Fresh cabbages, carrots, potatoes and green pepper cooked in a turmeric sauce; cabbage is very musical too, hooray!
Vegetable Curry
- Eggplants, squash, green and red peppers sautéed in a curry sauce; same deal with the sautéing.
Fasika totally works! I'd order either the Yé-Tikil Gomen or the Yé-Gomen Wot. In general, Ethiopian food is pretty rock star! Not a lot of frills and packed with vegetables.
But, Ethiopians do eat some funky stuff too. I saw on TV that they drink coffee with butter and salt. Yuck! Anyway, do me a favor. Flip through Fasika’s menu and tell what you’d order.
Image credit: Faskia Ethiopian Restaurant
We have a wonderful Ethiopian restaurant in New Brunswick, NJ, called MAKEDA. My wife and I visit before seeing shows at The State Theater or George Street Playhouse.
I love visiting ethnic restaurants. It amazes me how many people think eating a vegetarian/vegan diet is restrictive. Since switching to a plant-based diet, the variety of foods and tastes have increased at least 10-fold. SAD foods tends to be greasy, salty, and or sweet. By visiting ethnic restaurants and trying exotic fruits and vegetables, it's truly amazing how diverse a diet you can eat without animal products, refined sugar and flour, salt, butter and oils and other spices that predominate SAD food.
Michael
This sounded good so I looked up a recipe for Yé-Tikil Gomen and it may not apply to the restaurant recipe, but the one I found had 1/2 cup of oil. It may be something to remember to ask about if you eat there.