A Taste of Ethiopia

We traveled to Austin on Thursday to visit Billy and took him to try a highly recommended Ethiopian restaurant, Aster's. It was super good! A little tiny building but super clean and everyone was so friendly.

You could tell that a lot of the people were regulars. Most everyone ate with the forks but I noticed that there was a couple to the right of us who were only using the injera bread. Couldn't tell if they were only using their right hands or not (didn't want to stare!) My first taste of Ethiopian cuisine was split yellow peas with injear bread in my right hand. Very tasty... the injera bread has a very unique texture and taste. Kind of sour and spongy. I loved it as it kind of neutralized some of the spice. Billy and Neil were not fans. Claire wasn't either but I'm glad she at least tried it! She did enjoy her dance with Uncle Billy after we were wrapping up our meal.

We all (except Claire) loved it and would definitly go back for their buffet or even just a meal now that we know what we liked. My favorite was the stewed carrots and cabbage and the stewed tidbits of beef. They used a lot of onion, garlic, tumin and even cinnamon. Berbere is a spice that is unique to Ethiopian food and makes things spicy!

Eden attracted a lot of people and I'm so glad because we met an interesting man who happened to be from San Antonio. He asked if we'd been there and he hadn't either but loved Ethiopian food! He had a young man from Ethiopia live with them for seven years while he was going to St. Mary's. So they have a lot of experience with the food eating it all over country including Paris where this young man's family now has a restaurant. Cool! He said to me, "Oh! And you're eating it just like they do! But your left hand would be in your lap." SO cool that he noticed and gave me the tip =) Of course I was holing Eden's food with my left hand so I had a good excuse. (I did break out the fork because I was going through the bread like crazy). I should've asked him after they ate how it compared... darn! We even parked next to them. They had ACCD faculty sticker so maybe we'll run into them again someday.

We would recommend Aster's to anyone and will be going back. Wish they had a restaurant here in San Antonio so we could try it more often.

It was so nice to visit with Billy and for him to spend some time with the girls. With our car space, he had to camp out in the back (which is something we NEVER do) so ever since, Claire is telling everyone that Unlce Billy sat in the back. Guess it made an impression!

Oh! Love the pictures of this photographers experience at a restaurant in Nashville. Here is the link because it really depicts the food in a fresh, cool way:
http://darlingjourney.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/second-times-the-charm/