Hey there! Popping in for a rare Sunday post to share our latest adventure via our Finding Time in 2013 challenge. We were up to visit a new restaurant this month although to be honest, we would've headed out that evening, challenge or not! I'd spent the day cooking and cleaning and couldn't stand the thought of cleaning another dish. I was ready to sit and let someone else bring me dinner AND clean up afterward!
Heading to Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant was a no-brainer. Ryan and I had been saying for a few weeks that we were in the mood for Ethiopian. For those of you that have never had Ethiopian cuisine before, I highly recommend it...even the non-adventurous can likely find something they'll enjoy. I am drawn to the fact that you eat with your hands, picking up the food with injera, a sourdough flatbread. You can learn more about Ethiopian food on Wikipedia, but in short, the food is typically heavily spiced and featured a lot of meat stews as well as vegetarian dishes containing lentils or vegetables. Sounds right up our alley, huh?
Although Ethiopian restaurant menus are typically quite large, we usually opt for a combination platter of sorts, because it's way more fun to try a variety of dishes. This time we got two combo platters--one meat and one vegetarian--to ensure that we could try the largest number of dishes. Food is usually served family style, so as you can see in the photograph, it all came out together on a huge piece of injera. We then broke little pieces of our individual injera to pick up bits of the different dishes. I definitely couldn't tell you what most of them were, save for picking out the pain ingredient, but we basically ate the plate empty, which I'd call a success! In our case, the spicier the better!
Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant was larger than we anticipated (the other Ethiopian restaurant we've been to in St. Louis is pretty tiny) and pretty busy on a Saturday night. It's situated on (South) Grand Ave, which is essentially a mecca of multiculturalism in St. Louis. Service was fast and friendly, and our total dinner bill came to less than $40 (including tip and a beer for Ryan). I'm thankful we live in a city that has so many diverse dining options and I highly encourage you to seek out Meskerem (or another Ethiopian restaurant if you're not in St. Louis!) if you get the chance!

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