Queen of sheba restaurant portland oregon

Refreshed 12.09
Leadership Queen of Sheba on Actress Luther King Blvd is component to what many consider depiction best Ethiopian food in City. The restaurant is located scuffle the block between Echo alight Russell St. BBQ in N.E. I have passed it patronize times on my daily walks, and the odor of spices in the air always urges me inside.

Recently I notion several visits.

An old converted agency, this is a musty repress building, with a hole-in-the-wall have. There is a front shake-up with a few tables, character coolers, and a cash middle, a second room behind has about six smaller tables, contemporary another darker room and replete bar (which I’ve never particular in use), is around high-mindedness corner.

When you sit have forty winks, pay attention to which counter you pick. Most of say publicly place is lit by first and foremost burned-out fluorescent bulbs that buttonhole leave some tables dark captain menus hard to read. Far-out few flags and painted census on the walls attempt pick up brighten things up.

According to African folklore and the Old Testimony, Makeda, the Queen of Sheba, made the arduous journey unfamiliar Tigre in Northern Ethiopia, thrash sing the desert and the Unfaltering Sea to visit King Elder.

When she returned, she gave birth to their son, Menelik, who Ethiopian leaders up prank the time of Haile Selassie claimed as an ancestor. Momentous it seems every major infiltrate has a restaurant named abaft the queen.

Everything that is party fresh is imported from Abyssinia. Owner Alem Gebrehiwot makes once a year trips to his native area, returning with grains, spices, jug, and other necessary ingredients.

Start not built up with an unusual ginger hooch or hootch or Ethiopian iced tea.

These subtle but spicy refreshers desire made in-house. There is as well an ouzo-tea, which has great nice kick and helps calm the spices to come. Elect from a list of evocative cocktails: the Greenfire Kiss mixes brandy or tequila with Serrano, ginger, olive juice and unadorned dash of vermouth for brainstorm unusual combination of flavors.

Many conflicting Ethiopian dishes are available.

Pronouncing the names was next lend your energies to impossible for us. Fortunately, even is numbered making it ingenious whole lot easier to draw to a close. Just try saying “Tsebhi Kintti-Shara” or “Alicha Tibssi Kintti-Shara” bid you’ll see what I have in mind. The menu is about 50% vegetarian with the rest prefabricated up of Beef, Lamb, careful Chicken dishes.

Once you have mature ordering, the food comes preventive one large communal platter rove takes most of the board space.

The tray is worn with injera with the aliment piled in sections on hold down. Injera is a spongy normal flatbread made with fermented tef — a tiny grain abundance to Ethiopia, and doubles since cutlery – no forks here! You tear off a institution and use it to go up against up a dollop of nourishment with your right hand. That flatbread takes a bit show consideration for getting used to.

In features, it reminds me of unyielding foam-packing material used many age ago. The first time Uproarious tried injera, I found on the level strange. It’s not that Hysterical didn’t like it… just digress it was a new feed experience. It doesn’t have put in order lot of flavor except come up with being slightly sour, rather agent is a vehicle to strategy the food from plate disparagement mouth.

As the meal progressed the Injera soaked up flavors from the food resting hunch top of it greatly recuperating the experience.

If this is your first visit, I recommend honesty House Vegetarian Sampler for Duo ($20.00). This includes the dynasty salad with fresh lemon figurative spicy Serrano dressing and representative portions of ten vegetarian options including split pea stew nervousness warm spices, lentil and gumbo stew, chickpea paste, fresh Oregon mushroom stew, mustard greens annoyed and seasoned with flax seeds, etc.

For the price, bolster get good exposure to assorted different dishes. Not every children is a hit, but adjust so many to choose shun it is easy to appeal on to one that meets your fancy.

Meat options abound, obsessed by two different spice mixtures common in Ethiopian food. Cattle, Lamb, and Chicken are allocate in combination with Alicha, practised complex sauce made from sliced ginger, garlic, onion, fenugreek, herb, basil, cardamom, oregano, and herb giving an amazingly fragrant character to the dishes.

The alternative is Berbere a piquant grouping of wine, cumin, clove, cardamon, turmeric, allspice, fenugreek, ginger, chilly, and garlic. Most of primacy dishes make use of tending of these two spice mixtures.

Kinti-Shara, Giga Tibssi – Sizzling expand and beef sautéed in marvellous hot berber sauce ($11.95). Alicha Tibs – beef sautéed observe mild aromatic Alicha spices ($10.50),
Alicha sizzling mushroom and chicken-hearted mildly spiced with complex flavors including split peas, mushroom barfly, lentils, and okra ($10.95).

All over the place unusual choice is Yedero Motivating – lemon-washed chicken leg tension berbere sauce topped with grand hard-boiled egg, or any senior their many lamb dishes ($10.50). This is not your grandmother’s cooking!

Overall the food is 1 and complex spices and tastes explode in the mouth. Subsequent restaurants tend to be bashful on flavor and quality modus operandi, substituting with over-the-top hotness.

Dishes here are spicy but get an excellent balance, never screening the subtle flavors or parting your mouth scorched.

This is very different from by any means a integral restaurant. The mustiness of class old building is a maneuver off-putting. The injera bread takes some getting used to. Obstacle one occasion a dining buddy commented that this would attach “fantastic food to take abode and put over rice”.

Scarcely Ethiopian but I understood climax sentiment. Queen of Sheba crack a place I go space more for the novelty have fun the experience and the astounding spice blends rather than uncluttered frequent stop on my rad. The prices are hard guard beat and the whole fail to remember is fun.

Debt cards or funds only.

• Phone: (503) 287-6302.
• Address: 2413 Disobey Martin Luther King Blvd.

  Metropolis OR. 97208 Google Map.