Food columnist Andrew Coppolino dishes on Waterloo region's Ethiopian restaurants

Scout around Waterloo region and its environs and you'll discover a range of foods from Caribbean jerk and Serbian cevaps to Salvadoran pupusas and Polish perogies. 

There's also a cooking culture that flies under the radar but which has nevertheless provided us with some foundational foods that we may not realize.

The countries of the so-called Horn of Africa – Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia — are home to ancient civilizations and nearly 120 million people today. The area is the peninsula at the north-eastern part of the continent. 

In our area, we can also find some Ethiopian and Eritrean food. Some of it we know (cabbage, kale, lentils, peas); some of it we don't know very well: injera bread, for instance.

Injera, made from teff flour, a staple in that part of the continent, is a flat-bread that's much like a large moist and bubbly pancake that serves both as a platter for the food and as the utensil for eating it. The no-utensil aspect makes the dish unfamiliar to many Canadian diners.

At local Ethiopian restaurants, which have good vegetarian and vegan options, you can order a sampler platter with tekel gomen (cabbage and potatoes), misir key wot (lentils spiced with berbere, an important Ethiopian spice blend), misir alicha (lentils) and more. 

When the platter arrives at the table, you tear a piece of injera and scoop up the item you want. Beef, lamb and chicken dishes are also available. A veggie combo, which could serve two people, can be as inexpensive as $15.

Here's where you can find these dishes and more, here in Waterloo region:

Muya Restaurant

Located on Highland Road near Belmont Avenue in Kitchener, Muya started out as a bakery cranking out injera behind a small take-away shop about eight years ago, before expanding into the space next door.  The dining room can now hold a couple dozen people. The full reach of the restaurant is larger, however: co-owner Wendessen Weldgioris says they deliver thousands of injera into the GTA each month. Kifto, the Ethiopian version of steak tartare, is on the menu as well as other meat dishes such as zilzil tibs (charbroiled sirloin).

East African Cafe

I've eaten here several times, but I was surprised to learn that EAC has been operating for 12 years. The restaurant is located on Ontario Street in Kitchener, between King and Charles streets, and owners Afework and Helen Germayie came to Canada from Ethiopia through Greece in 1993. Vegan and vegetarian diners love the restaurant, which is at work developing a gluten-free injera batter. Especially delicious is the veggie platter, which includes yellow peas and tekel gomen. By the way, several years ago the late physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking ate here during a visit to Waterloo's Perimeter Institute.

K-W African Cuisine

This Ethiopian restaurant is located on Hazelglen Drive in the Victoria Hills Plaza.

A-M Africa

Once located in the narrow confines of an upstairs restaurant on King Street, downtown Kitchener, A-M Africa moved to the former Rockway Fish and Chips site adjacent to Rockway Gardens. It closed a few years later, but recently — and although there is no signage at time of writing — the lights and have been on, and it looks like the restaurant is set to re-open.

No matter what restaurant you visit, it's interesting to note that a number of foods we think of as "ours," especially in the cooking of the American south, came from the Horn of Africa during the slave trade period between 1650 and 1700: that includes coffee, black-eyed peas, sorghum, okra and several types of melons.

I think knowing where our food comes from — including its long and complex history — is important.