Cafe Romanat

This popular Oakland restaurant is run by Adey and Mebrat Hagos, the owner and executive chef, respectively. It’s named after Romanat, a village in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. The family-style dishes are all served with traditional or gluten-free injera, a side salad and buticha. The house specialty is the mitten shiro, incorporating house-made chickpea flour and seasoned with berbere spices. Vegans swear by the misir wot, red lentils simmered with ginger, garlic and red onions, while meat-lovers should opt for the quanta fitfit, strips of beef tenderloin mixed with injera, then sauteed in butter, onions, rosemary, jalapeno and spices. Here, the drinks are as noteworthy as the food, from the house-made honey wine to the flax, sesame and sunflower seed smoothies. Make a reservation for a the 30-minute Ethiopian coffee ceremony, in which green coffee beans are roasted and wafted over hot coals, ground and boiled in a traditional ceramic kettle.