Ethiopic

Address: 401 H St., NE, Washington, DC 20002

Phone: 202-675-2066

Neighborhood: H Street NE, Capitol Hill, Northeast

Cuisines: Vegetarian/Vegan, Ethiopian

Opening Hours: Monday through Thursday 5 to 10, Friday and Saturday noon to 10.

Wheelchair Accessible: Yes

Kid Friendly: Yes

Nearby Metro Stops: Union Station

Price Range: Inexpensive

Dress: Informal

Noise Level: Chatty

Reservations: Not Needed

Website: Click here to open in new window.

Best Dishes Butcha (ground chickpeas and jalapenos); doro wat, a chicken stew; kitfo, minced raw beef; vegetarian sampler with boiled lentils, split peas, potato/cabbage salad, gomen, and tomato/onion salad.

Special Features:
Wheelchair Accessible, Kid Friendly

Only the top 40 restaurants were ranked in 2011's Best Restaurants list.

Ethiopians have a term for cooking that plays to Western tastes with muted spicing and larger cuts of meat: Europian. This former corner store in DC’s gentrifying H Street district makes a concerted effort to hew to its origins. Its vegetable stews have zip and body, and the excellent doro wat has a chunky gravy of berbere and caramelized onions that deserves the kind of contemplative appreciation usually reserved for fine French cooking.

Dinner unspools in a tiny room warmed with tastefully chosen fabrics, works from co-owner Meseret Bekele’s art collection, and a few mesobs—woven tables and stools traditional in Ethiopian homes and restaurants. Europian it’s not.

Also good: Beet-and-potato salad; buticha, a spicy chickpea purée; lamb tibs.

Open Tuesday through Sunday for dinner, Friday through Sunday for lunch. Inexpensive.

>> See all of 2011's Best Restaurants