This city needs more places like Lovenest. Shoot, if you ask me, the name even manifests exactly what the world should be: one big, old, giant love nest. With good food. Aw, yes, just thinking about it warms the cockles of my heart; and thinking about it still warms the cockles –if there are cockles there- of my stomach.
Now, I must be honest, dear readers, I’m an amateur when it comes to the food offered at Lovenest: Ethiopian and East African. Heck, I can’t even call myself an amateur, because even amateurs have some sort of casual participation. I’ve only ever heard about this kind of cuisine from others who have eaten it in their lives. If anything, I was merely a newcomer into the world of Ethiopian cuisine. I had read the theory beforehand, and took two dear, but equally new colts along for yet another expedition in the field of gastronomic anthropology.
It was an overwhelming undertaking entering a room thick with foggy incense, deep red walls, dim lighting, and straw tables we had never before seen. Heck, I even confused a table with coffee for a shrine of some sort. Don’t worry; I am ashamed of myself. But that was as extraneous as the place got; it had tables that seated multiple diners, a bar where one could pay and order a drink, and the typical foreign tapestries that always play to the illusion of the authenticity of the places we eat in. Themes, I tells ya. There was even a flat screen television hung on the wall tuned into not the news, not the weather, but that ever so lovable bald boy, Caillou. Oh, you don’t know? Well, maybe you should be a little more like your juvenile narrator.
 |
Greeted assuredly, we were taken to a table that accommodated all three of us (appetites included) and were pointed to the simple menus that sat under the glass. For both lunch and dinner we were given the option of nine manageable items. It was, as far as I was concerned, paradise. Now, if I may allude to my opening statement, more places should be like Lovenest. Menus today, I tells ya, they’re too complicated, too overbearing, too full of too many choices; perhaps a symptom of the free market? We only have one stomach after all, and though stomachs may get hungry many-a-time in our lives, we never visit a place multiple times in attempt to try every item on the menu, but instead go back for favourites, thus becoming regulars. Right? Well, at Lovenest, you can have it all. Regularity and menu mastery. A characteristic of the Ethiopian restaurant, I am told, is the small menu. That, and the ritual of eating without cutlery, a sourdough flatbread resembling a thicker more voluptuous crepe taking its place.
 |
My company and I ordered our respective dishes, vegetarian for a third of us, and whatever else had meat in it for the rest. In retrospect, the menu being the size that it was, offered a substantial choice for vegetarians and was affordable. The most expensive plate, a full vegetarian meal, was 15.99 and the least a mere ten dollars.
We were dazzled when our meals arrived: chopped meats, salads, and vegetarian purees decorated atop capacious pieces of the flat, acidic, sour dough bread, with even more of said bread on separate plates and rolled into convenient bales. The bigger the bale, the bigger the friendship I’m told.
 |
My own meal was a dry stew of tenderloin lamb and beef with spiced butter, onion, and other pungent seasonings like chili pepper, garlic, and ginger- to name only a few in the medley of Ethiopian jumble. Tearing off a piece of bread made from wheat, barley and teff, I grabbed as much stew as I could for every mouthful. The flavours were fresh. The acidity of the bread combined with the savoury spices of the stew were bright, and an expectedly heavy dish actually tasted very clean, characteristic of a tart and simple tomato sauce. And though there were no tomatoes in the dish, the garlic, cooked just until tender on the cusp of being raw and caramelized along with the basil used to pepper the dish made it seem so. The meat itself was somewhat tough, but its small, diced character made it manageable, and though I felt the salad to be a mere courtesy, chopped romaine lettuce with a supermarket dressing, it was outshined by the better qualities of the dish.
And if we weren’t being hedonistic enough struggling to finish our enormous portions, we made sure to ask the host if there was anything good to drink, to which we were answered with by three bottles of Ethiopian stout: a beer with a strong molasses aroma, fruity body and caramel head. Its most intriguing quality however, was that it managed to hold its own full flavor without being hoppy; instead, it was plummy and rich.
My party and I were more than satisfied, though feeling a little guilty at not having been able to finish our plates. We were invited to come back for some Ethiopian coffee soon, and calling ahead for our orders so we could avoid any wait for future meals and of course, the coffee, which takes a slow twenty minutes to brew, our host being very apologetic for not having been able to get our food to us sooner. That’s right, nothing but courtesy at Lovenest. But it was over our heads, because we were more excited about coming back.
Lovenest183 King St.East Kitchener,
ON N2G 2K8
(519) 570-0990
Tuesday 12:00pm - 10:00pm
Wednesday & Thursday 12:00pm - 09:00pm
Friday 12:00 - 10:00pm
Saturday 12:00pm - 11:00pm Sunday 01:00pm - 10:00pm
Payment methods: Debit card, visa, master and cash
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment