Having just returned from Ethiopia, I was curious to see how Vancouver’s Ethiopian fare compared to the real thing. With this in mind, and some amenable friends to keep me company, I popped into the Addis Café on Commercial Drive to see whether a meal at Addis Café could rival a meal in Addis Ababa.

The Ingredients

There’s a limited selection of ingredients in most of Ethiopia; the country’s infrastructure doesn’t allow for mass transport of food that requires refrigeration, and traditional dishes have been built around this fact. Meats, lentils, potatoes, onions and spices are heavily relied on. Addis Café uses these, along with the addition of broccoli, feta cheese, cauliflower and green beans in some dishes.

Winner: Vancouver’s Addis Café, if you believe that variety is the spice of life.

The Menu

The most traditional Ethiopian restaurants are found on dirt roads and don’t have menus. Upscale places do, but they tend to be in Amharic. If you do find English text, it’s a lot like the English on Japanese novelties. Menus read “Bone Appetite,” and offer such Western dishes as “Papper Stakes,” as well as traditional dishes, which have no standardized English spelling.

Winner: Ethiopia. Humour and guesswork are more fun than readable and accurate information.

h2.Adherence to Religious Doctrine

There’s a nice variety of vegetarian food served during fasting times in Ethiopia. Outside of fasting time, a nice variety of meat dishes are served. These two menus rarely overlap. If it’s a fasting day you’re vegetarian, and if not, you eat meat. It’s as simple as that. Ethiopian restaurants in Vancouver tend to ignore the religious cooking guidelines of their home country and offer both at all times.

Winner: Addis Café, for not adhering to frustrating religious diets.

The Food Itself

Aside from the occasional ingredients such as green beans, Addis Café serves up pretty much what you’d find on injera in Ethiopia. In particular the Messr Wot (spicy lentils), are better than their Ethiopian versions because of more sophisticated spicing. The injera (that big pancake thing) is also above average, and the spiced tea, which you can pick up at any cafe in Ethiopia, is just as good at Addis as it is in the native land. Sweet and deliciously spiced, the teas is best described as an Ethiopian version of Chai. However, the shiro (chickpea sauce with burbere spice)was utterly flavourless at the Vancouver restaurant.

Winner: Ethiopia. The shiro decided this one.

The Service

This is a tough call. Ethiopia breeds some of the worst waiters and waitresses you can ever encounter. They ignore you for long periods of time; forget your order or bring extras that you didn’t ask for; blatantly lie to you about what you’ve been served if they’ve made a mistake; and most humorous of all, regularly wander away during brief pauses in your order, making you shout them back so you can finish. Also, tipping has no effect. After leaving a good tip for good service, you are just as likely to be rewarded with an hour-long wait for a menu the next time you turn up.

Addis Café seems to try and recreate this atmosphere of complete indifference but can’t quite pull it off. Waitresses don’t often disappear for long periods of time, and proceeded in Canadian waitressy fashion.

Once, however, a waitress did do the traditional walkaway when asked if the Ethiopian coffee they served was imported from Ethiopia:

“Why do you want to know?”

"I'm curious"

(Waitress turns and wanders off, never to return.)

Eventually, this almost-surly waitress was replaced by an incredibly cheerful Ethiopian gentleman who kept coming by to ask how things were, offer more water and be generally helpful, which totally ruined it.

Winner: Addis Café. Barely.

The Price

You can’t beat Ethiopian prices. If you’re willing to shell out the hundreds of dollars to travel there, that is. In Ethiopia you can easily feed five people with drinks for about $12. At Addis Café, you can expect to pay $12 each.

Winner: Ethiopia, if you’re going there anyways. However, if you’re thinking of flying there just for a meal, Addis Café wins by a long shot.