LOMA LINDA: Ayda Ethiopian Restaurant is finger lickin' good

Here are six reasons why you might enjoy dining at Ayda Ethiopian Restaurant in Loma Linda:

1. Admit it. It’s fun to eat like a child with your fingers. You’re actually supposed to dig into all Ethiopian food without utensils, which are optional.

2. Ayda, at 24940 Redlands Blvd., is owned by two gracious, friendly sisters, Ayda and Konjit Danel from Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Ayda Danel cooks and Konjit Danel serves.

3. Ethiopian cuisine should appeal to vegetable, meat, coffee and especially fiery spice lovers. Berbarie, a combo of powdered chili pepper and other seasonings, is an important ingredient, as is kibbeh, a clarified butter infused with ginger, garlic and several other spices.

4. This intimate cafe that seats 24 is decorated in popping yellows and reds, colors culled from the country’s flag. The walls pay homage to the homeland, hung with photographs and pictures of national heroes and historical scenes, distinguished Ethiopian humanitarians and musical instruments. The atmosphere is a cross between quaint and exotic.

5. It’s unusual to find a restaurant today that doesn’t numb your eardrums with high-decibel noise passing for music. But my dining companion and I were greeted at Ayda by the sounds of silence, which remained blissfully unbroken throughout the meal.

6. Every other Saturday, the sisters conduct an on-premise coffee-roasting ceremony from 2 to 4 p.m., designed for families.

During a recent lunch hour, the Danels took time to explain the menu, and most importantly, how to eat like a native. The lynchpin is the bread called injera. The sisters said that for now, they buy this spongy, sourdough flatbread pocked with tiny holes. Making it from scratch with teff flour, barley and water is too labor-intensive, they said, requiring a two-to-four day fermentation process.

A typical dish, served communal-style, is covered with a 20-inch injera topped with some kind of wot, or stew. Ethiopians ditch silverware to break off small pieces of bread wielded in one hand like a castanet to snap up the food.

Don’t confuse the accompanying basket of rolled-up injera with napkins, as we did. This bread is the equivalent of the mortar that binds the meal’s components together. It is not for spreading on your lap.

My friend and I tried the swooping and scooping technique but practicality soon trumped novelty: we begged for forks and spoons. My veggie plate ($7.99), Ayda’s most popular dish, proved to be a pleasing color palette. The injera was daubed with little mounds of red lentil stew, split pea stew, green beans, potato, cabbage and carrot salad a green salad and more injera, chopped and sauteed with garlic, tomatoes, ginger and jalpenos. The different tastes and textures married well, except for the mushy green beans.

My dining pal liked but barely made a dent in her yawaza tibs, meaning strips of beef sauteed in seasoned, clarified butter with red peppers, onion and a hint of rosemary served with a vinaigrette-tossed salad. She found the bread a little “weird,” and an unnecessary companion to the “very good, tender, spicy” meat, of which there was far too much.

My only regret is that I didn’t bring a big, hungry group which would have made short work of these piquant dishes.

All meals for dining profiles are paid for by The Press-Enterprise.

Source: pe.com