Where are your favourite restaurants and coffee shops?
I have been enjoying Ethiopian coffee shops on Queen W and St Clair W.
Buno Coffee on Lauder south of St Clair
Ethiopian coffee shop in Scarborough
I have dined at Rendez-Vous on the Danforth in the past.
I remember Lalibela on Bloor was quite popular with Chowhounds.
Selam on Bloor is often quite busy when I walk past.
Rendez-Vous is our usual place currently on the Danforth strip. It has a nice range of dishes.
Lalibela (Danforth location) has an even wider variety on their menu and is also pretty solid. They get bonus points for having tej (honey wine). I believe the Lalibela on Bloor is under separate ownership. The menus are different. We like them also and particularly like that they serve foul, commonly available for breakfast in Ethiopia.
We haven’t been to Nazareth on Blood for years. The vegetable dishes were particularly good and we also liked the fish (common on Ethiopian menus to accommodate the many fasting days on their orthodox calendar). We also haven’t been to Wazema on the Danforth for several years, but it was also good and had some less common menu options (e.g., cornis).
We have not tried Selam. We haven’t been to Ethiopian House in years because we found the meat pretty chewy at times. This is perhaps true to how meat was for us in Ethiopia, even in the expensive places catering to faranji (foreigners). I don’t know if this is because most of the cows we saw were emaciated husks or because cooking meat for a long time uses up scarce fuel. Anyway, chewy, gristly meat is not to our taste. Ethiopian House also had less variety of vegetable dishes than other places.
For coffee, Arsema’s Variety Store a few blocks from our house serves up a nice cup of buna. More importantly to us, she sometimes imports 100% teff injera, which we buy when we are making doro wat at home.
Someone on Reddit mentioned they find Wazema, and Shalom on Parliament less salty. I haven’t tried either, yet.
Thanks for mentioning the fish at Nazareth. I’ve not had Ethiopian fish.
I forgot about Shalom. I went there pre-pandemic and they were pretty good too. I don’t remember if they or Wazema were particularly less salty.
Ethiopians do fish at least two ways. They often deep fry the whole fish. They also cook the filets with a sauce that they often call goulash or some variant thereof. Other than the sauce being kinda red, I’m not sure about any other connection to Eastern European cooking.
Silly question but are there any Ethiopian restaurants outside of the city? We’re in York Region and usually head down to Rendezvous/La Vegan and occasionally Hirut when they have a jazz performer we like.
There’s one called Enat in London, ON. (Not convenient for you, but located outside TO)
Thank you for the info. Hopefully this will be helpful for others in that area.
Richmond Hill is definitely more diverse than it used to be when we first moved here. I’d love to see Tibetan (though some South Asian places do have momos), Ethiopian, Egyptian, Ital to name a few.
There are dozens of Turkish places opening in Vaughan lately.
Any recommendations? Vegan friendly? I don’t know much about Turkish food.
Thank you!
This might be a fun and informative read for you, then.
Thank you so much!
I don’t find myself north of Toronto often. I keep seeing nice bakeries and restaurants in Vaughan pop up.
I’ll add links as I see them, to the Turkish Balkan in the GTA thread.
Lots of good vegetarian and vegan options at full service Turkish restaurants that are not focused on kebabs.
It’s interesting to see where the Ethiopian restaurants are located.
Wass is an Ethiopian restaurant in Hamilton
Marathon in Windsor
https://marathonethiopianrestaurant.com/
Kitchener Waterloo has 3 options
Ottawa has at least 4 options.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ottawa/s/W11vNftaQ1
No Ethiopian restaurants in Peterborough or Kingston.
It looks like there’s a large enough community to support many restaurants on the Danforth, in Bloordale and on Queen West.
In other cities of significant size west of Toronto, 1 or 2 Ethiopian or Eritrean restaurants might exist.
There were 2 or 3 when I lived in Calgary 20 years ago, and London had up to 3 at one point.
I googled for north of Toronto, and I didn’t find any Ethiopian or Eritrean restaurants north of Bloor.
For West African restaurant, which should have their own thread, interestingly, Barrie has at least one Nigerian restaurant and a store. Oshawa has 4 or 5.
