Tana Ethiopian Restaurant – Anaheim, California

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1. MARLA JO FISHER says:

   December 3, 2009 at 11:47 am

   
   (Elda Amanuel, 12, pours Kettle Coffee ($5.50) where green beans are roasted for aroma. The beans are ground and boiled in a Jebena, a coffee kettle, and served in small coffee cups at Tana Ethiopian Restaurant in Anaheim.)

   Tana is a taste of Africa

   ANAHEIM The first thing you notice when you drive up to Tana Ethiopian Restaurant is that it’s located in a miniature United Nations of a strip mall, sandwiched between a Filipino bakery and a Kenyan restaurant, with an Indian cafe and Thai place thrown in for good measure.

   You could travel halfway around the world without ever leaving this building, which can be found in a tired neighborhood of Anaheim.

   On a recent afternoon, though, our journey concluded at the tiny Tana restaurant, which occupies a storefront with several tables.

   This is a pretty bare-bones establishment that opened three years ago, though they’ve decorated the walls with bamboo and African prints.

   Clearly, you’re here for the food. And the food did not disappoint us.

   My previous experience with Ethiopian food was mostly from the Fairfax district in Los Angeles, where a string of such restaurants have, strangely enough, opened up in an otherwise orthodox Jewish neighborhood.

   I always liked the highly spiced food, and the unusual, communal way of eating it, by taking pieces of spongy flatbread called injera and using them to transfer the food from a shared plate to your mouth.

   No forks or spoons necessary.

   One drawback, I’d found, though, was the extremely laidback attitude toward service. OK, some people might just say horrible, but it’s obviously cultural. What I mean is you can sit dying of thirst, with an empty water glass, while your server is 10 feet away for a long, long time before anyone notices. You almost want to bring signs you can wave to say, “I’m so thirsty, please help.”

   At Tana, though, we were greeted promptly with a smile by owner Shewaye Zeleke, who brought us our drinks right away. Yay. Of course we were there at an odd hour when only one other table was occupied.

   I wasn’t sure how the three kids I’d hauled along were going to take Ethiopian food, so I ordered a vegetarian sampler, one chicken dish and two types of beef.

   I asked Zeleke to make sure everything was prepared mild on the spices in deference to youthful palates.

   Our meal arrived on a huge platter covered with injera, the spongy Ethiopian flat sourdough bread made from teff, an Ethiopian grain. Two large baskets of rolled injera also came, and I showed the kids how to tear off a piece, wrap food from the platter into it, and eat it.

   They approved of this method of dispensing with cutlery altogether.

   The vegetarian special included yemiser wot, a dish of red lentils cooked with garlic and ginger and red pepper; kik alicha, split peas, also in ginger and garlic; cooked cabbage, a spinach dish called gommen, lettuce salad, cooked potatoes and carrots.

   We liked the spinach the most, again prepared simply with garlic and ginger. I was happy to see my kids wolf down their greens. They also liked the potatoes and carrots.

   I liked the red lentils the most among the legumes.

   We all loved the beef and there wasn’t a morsel left of the zil zil tibs, which were tender beef bits marinated in a sauce called awaze with honey wine, garlic and ginger, or the gored gored, which was a different cut of bite-sized beef with onion and green peppers in herb butter sauce.

   Both these dishes had flavor and were tender without being bitingly hot.

   We also ordered the doro wot, which was chicken in a red pepper sauce with butter, garlic onion and ginger. Hard boiled eggs were in the dish, whole. This normally spicy dish was made more mild for my kids’ palates, but still had a bit too much heat for them.

   After we’d eaten our fill, we realized the four of us had pretty much consumed the entire contents of the huge platter, so that was a testament to the food.

   One thing we didn’t have, since I was with kids, was the special pot of Ethiopian coffee for two, in which green coffee beans are roasted, ground and boiled in a special pot. I’ll have to come back for that one.

   All in all, we enjoyed our time at Tana and we all voted to come back.

   Our bill for the four of us came to $50.20, including the large vegetarian sampler for $14.99, two beef dishes for $10 each, the chicken dish for $12 and various soft drinks.

   On our second visit, we were old hands and knew what to expect. The kids immediately voted for the vegetarian platter and gobbled down the split peas in the shiro wat plus the potatoes and carrots. They also loved the beef dishes, again. This time, I ordered the gommen with meat, which was collard greens cooked with beef bits, garlic and ginger.

   I don’t always like collard greens, sometimes I find them bitter. But these were cooked with great flavor. I’ll definitely order them again.

   Again, we stuffed ourselves, and our bill with drinks came to about $50. So this isn’t the cheapest restaurant around, but the food is good and service pleasantly homey.

   As we left, on Sunday night, I noticed the tiny neighboring store that sold African items was open, as was the Kenyan restaurant on the other side. This teeny, tired little strip mall seems to be an African outpost in Anaheim. So it’s a chance to go to Africa without buying a plane ticket.

   Can’t beat that.

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