Ethiopian: The Real Deal

The taxi driver who took me from DFW airport to my house is from Ethiopia. He moved to the States about 15 years ago. He's married. He has been back to Ethiopia within the last year. He returns periodically to visit family. He's from the western part of the country, from place called (I believe...I didn't write it down) Jima.

All of this information came after I asked him where he was from, originally, and after I then proceeded to tell him how much I love gored-gored and kitfo and zilzil tibs and awaze spices and...you get the idea, I went on and one.

We spoke about his favorite Ethiopian restaurant in the Dallas area, Ghion. I've not been there, but on his recommendation I will.

I asked him about a dish I saw served and eaten as another Ethiopian restaurant where my wife and I have eaten a few times, Lalibela. I described the dish as a huge chunk of raw meat that was placed in the middle of a table where four men sat. Each man was given a HUGE knife and they proceeded to slice off big slabs of the beef and dip it into sauces of some kind and eat it. It looked like it was just up my alley, since I truly love raw beef.

He knew instantly what I was describing. He said it was something called tire siga. It is simply a chunk of very good beef from which pieces are sliced off, picked up in a piece of torn injera, and dipped in a spicy berbere sauce (though I swear my taxi driver said "dada," but I may have mis-heard...online it's berbere. From what I've read online, the traditional tire siga is camel meat, which is a bit hard to come by here, and it's also dipped in lemon juice in addition to berbere. I may have to go to Ethiopia to find the real thing.