Food Adventure Team

Time for another sad case of the missing review. The good news is, Assab is so fantastic that I’ve gone back numerous times in the past few years. It’s Ed’s and my go-to Eritrean restaurant in San Francisco. We’ve introduced many people to it and everyone concurs: Assab is the bomb! My favorite dish is shiro – “medium-mild seasoned ground chickpeas cooked with onions, tomatoes, and light pepper”. It’s wonderfully creamy and flavorful. For two people we generally order one meat combo and one veggie combo, substituting either the zucchini or the okra with shiro. We always waddle away stuffed to the gills and very happy! The proprietors of this place are delightful and the service is impeccable. I highly recommend Assab!

(Written December 6, 2010.)

Introduced to me by my friends Tinny and Jarek, Cafe Colucci has quickly become my favorite Ethiopian place in the Bay Area. There isn’t anywhere in San Francisco that compares. This food is FLAVORFUL. It’s pretty greasy and has loads of onions but you know, live a little!

We started with the the meat sambussa and some fried potato things. They kind of resembled floppy potato chips, but they were very flavorful, especially when topped with salt and that spicy red powder they have on the table instead of pepper. Sambussa were delicious of course.

For the main course, we ordered a massive plate of food to share. They split it into two plates, actually. We got two orders of the veggie combo, which I always get when I go to Colucci. My favorite is the buticha, which is kind of like hummus. We got the sega tibs (beef with onions, jalapenos, rosemary, fresh tomato), doro tibs (chicken with onions, jalapenos, etc.), mushroom tibs, lamb tibs, and shrimp tibs. The food came out steaming hot, served on a bed of injera — the vinegar-y bubbly bread that is traditional of Ethiopian food. Infinite injera was served in baskets; you use the bread as a sort of utensil to scoop the food from the plate. Everything was rich and flavorful. Onions are perfectly caramelized, meat was tender and permeated with flavor.

I can’t really describe this place well enough. Just go.

I never got around to writing a detailed review of Bissap Baobab, unfortunately. Here’s the short review: Delicious food. Everything that was ordered was wonderful, especially the fish. Was a little disappointed about the meat to veggie ratio (too much meat, very little veggie), but I was told it’s not usually like that. Loved the hot ginger juice after dinner. Cocktails looked wonderful, though I did not partake. Service during the meal was a little slow, but that’s probably because they were very busy. Service before the meal was upsetting: I had made a reservation for 8, but then a couple of people bailed last-minute. I called about an hour ahead to let them know. Then one more person bailed, which I didn’t find out till I got to the restaurant. The owner was very rude and made us wait 45 minutes for our table because of the changes; apparently changing your reservation nullifies it? The host was extremely nice, though of course he didn’t have any power over the owner. The experience set the tone for the night, so even though the food and drink was delicious, I felt kind of “eh” about the place. I’d go back though, with a smaller party.