‘They call me Mr. Tibs’

Ethnic restaurants often act as de facto social clubs for local communities representing their homelands. Himalayan Cuisine, our only Nepali restaurant, attracts a coterie of local Nepalis. Magura, one of America’s few places for Bulgarian food, is a beehive of Balkan culture and activity.

Now we can add Lalibela, named for a small city in Ethiopia, to this list. Come at lunch, and you’ll probably see taxicabs parked in the small lot. This town has Ethiopian cabbies in abundance, and many of them like to take their lunch break here.

Don’t be put off by the dodgy location, on a small street that runs off Desert Inn Road near Maryland Parkway. On one visit, there were police cars in the parking lot, blaring their sirens. It took an initial coaxing to get my friends to get out of my car, but once they did, they had a grand old time. The food here is delicious, uncompromisingly authentic. It may be because they are cooking for themselves, and not Americanizing things one bit.

I spent a few days in Ethiopia in 1973, a dry, dusty place where the restaurants are just like this one is, simple and unadorned. There are bare walls and tables covered with white plastic. You enter through a fully stocked bar, into a dining room that has a stage for local musicians who play Ethiopian music here on weekends. The only decoration is a picture of Abebe Bikila, their national hero, who won two Olympic gold medals in the marathon, the first in Rome, 1960, famously without wearing shoes.

Ethiopian food is pretty simple, too, lots of stewed meats and vegetables, tricked up and made lively by various spice mixtures they call berbere, which contains spices like bishop weed, used little in European cooking, and a fair amount of crushed red pepper.

The thing that most people remember about this cuisine, though, is the bread, called injera. Picture a large, circular gray sponge, shaped like a flying saucer. Lalibela makes its own using teff, special flour made from millet. It has a mildly fermented flavor and is an acquired taste. The injera serves as a base for whatever dishes you order, which will be placed onto it, in order to be scooped up and eaten by hand. It may take getting used to.

Take note that this is a cuisine generally without appetizers or dessert, neither of which appears on the menu here. Also note that this is a fairly spicy cuisine, so beer may be the drink of choice with these dishes. It certainly is for me.

The most famous Ethiopian dish in the West is probably tibs, beef tips sautéed with red pepper, black pepper, red onion, cardamom and salt. Also popular is doro wot, a delicious chicken stew. The one problem is that every dish on the menu is not available every day. I called one day to make sure the restaurant was serving chicken, and was assured it was. When I got there, though, the chicken, it seems, had fled the coop.

So rely on Vegetarian Delight, which for my money is the most beautiful dish here and the best deal, as well. A 12-inch pizza-sized injera as colorful as Picasso’s palette comes to the table, daubed with four tasty and distinctive dishes. Ye’hesha gomen means collard greens in Amharic, and these are indescribably delicious.

Telal gomen is a stew of potato and cabbage, while yekik alicha are split peas. Finally, there’s yemsir kikwat, a spicy red lentil puree. The Amharic language quiz after lunch is optional.

So are a couple of even more ethnic dishes, which my friends tried rather gingerly, and didn’t much care for. One is called kitfo, the Ethiopian version of steak tartare, which has a counterpart on this menu called special kitfo, although I couldn’t tell the difference. The kitfo is reddish and raw, even though our waitress asked if we wanted it rare or medium. I did say medium rare, for the record, but it still came out raw.

But at any rate, the beef was oddly spiced, and just a bit too strange for my company. It didn’t get any better when we ordered dullet, a dish of organ meats using tripe, liver, beef and a rather strong berbere. Well, the cab drivers like it, anyway.

There are a few other dishes that I can recommend highly, though. Asa tibs, which our waitress referred to as “fish goulash,” is incredibly good, even if she seemed baffled as to what kind of fish was being served. “Just fish,” she told us. (I think it was catfish.)

And there is also an amazingly gamy lamb stew, big chunks of mildly spiced meat that literally fall off the bone. Yes, in case you didn’t guess, the meat is served on the bone. It is called yebeg alicha on this menu, since I’m assuming your Amharic is less than good.

Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant

870 Sierra Vista Drive. 733-9808.

asa tibs, $9.