15 Traditional Ethiopian Foods and Drinks To Try on Your Next Trip

One of the most popular Ethiopian foods is tibs, a dish of meat—beef, lamb, goat, or chicken—chopped into strips and fried in clarified butter with onions, peppers, garlic, herbs, and spices. It’s usually served (not surprisingly) with injera. Tibs is often served at special occasions, like holidays and festivals, but is readily available at most restaurants in Ethiopia. You can also try shekla tibs, a version served in a clay pot with hot coals underneath it, to keep the food warm. Take a food tour to find the best spots serving tibs.

Doro wot is a stew named for the protein it’s made from: chicken. This dish is usually made with drumsticks, and the meat is cooked in a sauce made with berbere (a well-known Ethiopian spice blend), butter, onions, chili, and cardamom. Lastly, the cook adds a single hard-boiled egg, which is meant to be eaten by the special guest being honored at the meal.

As you may have guessed from the single egg detail, doro wot is typically only eaten on special occasions because it takes longer than many other foods to prepare—and it can be hard to find at restaurants. If you want to try it, ask a local guide to point you toward the right eatery, or join a food tour.

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Sambusas are Ethiopian samosas and are often served as an appetizer or as a snack. They can be served with buna (Ethiopian coffee), a soft drink, or spris, a cup of fresh fruit juices layered on top of each other. If you order sambusas in a restaurant, they’ll usually be filled with chicken or beef. If you’d prefer a vegetable-filled version, look for ayib, which features lentils or cottage cheese.

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If you want to try one of the country’s most popular breakfast foods, order some version of firfir. While the name means “leftovers,” the term refers to specific dishes designed to reuse certain kinds of foods. Quanta firfir, for instance, consists of dried meat (beef, lamb, sheep, or goat) mixed with injera. Enqulal firfir is made of scrambled eggs cooked in clarified butter with spices, peppers, and chilies and is served with freshly made bread rolls.

Meanwhile, Dabo firfir is made from torn-up bread mixed with berbere and clarified butter; it’s sometimes served with yogurt. These versions can often be found on restaurant menus and, while they’re traditionally served for breakfast, you can also often order them at lunch or dinner.

Another breakfast dish, fatira is a thin, flaky pastry with scrambled eggs and honey in the middle. Unlike firfir, fatira is a regional dish—it’s mostly enjoyed in Harar, a city in the eastern part of the country. You do not need to go to a restaurant to enjoy it; for a quicker breakfast, you can find it sold as street food. It is best with a cup of buna.

Ti’hilo is a dish unique to Tigray, a region in the northern part of Ethiopia. It’s made of barley that’s been rolled into balls; to eat each bite, you pierce it with a double-pronged utensil and dip it in a red sauce made from spices and flour served in a clay pot. (It’s usually also served with injera.)

While ti’hilo is not commonly served in other parts of Ethiopia, it can be found at a few restaurants in Addis Ababa; in-the-know locals and hotel employees might be able to point you in the right direction.

The cuisine of many countries is influenced by people who resided there because of colonialism. In Ethiopia, this influence comes from Italy, which tried (and failed) to make Ethiopia a colony—but left a mark on the country’s food in the process. One of the Italian-style dishes left by this legacy is pasta beu atkilt, a noodle dish with fried vegetables like carrot, gomen (cooked kale or collard greens), and onions.

There’s also a meat version, pasta beu siga, which is similar to spaghetti Bolognese. These fusion dishes may not be served at many Ethiopian restaurants; to try them, your best bet is to visit one of the several Italian restaurants in the capital city of Addis Ababa.

Asa means fish in Amharic, the main language spoken in Addis Ababa. If you order it, you’ll likely get Nile perch, which is one of the most commonly eaten fish in the country. It is usually served whole—bones and all—accompanied by injera and a spicy sauce. You can also get a boneless dish, asa tibs, which is fish cut into chunks and marinated with lemon, paprika, freshly chopped minced garlic, and berbere before being fried in oil.

This beef stew is made by cooking cubed beef with stock, berbere, onions, tomato paste, sugar, garlic, and other ingredients. It also has a few names, depending on the level of spiciness: if it’s spicy, it’s called key sega wot; if it’s mild, you’ll see it as alicha wot. There’s also a version of this dish that uses ground beef, called minchet. It’s spicy and can be served with a boiled egg, like the classic chicken dish doro wot.

Kitfo is a dish of raw ground beef mixed with butter, thyme, and mitmita (a spice blend similar to berbere, but spicier). It is usually served with Ethiopian cottage cheese (ayib), minced spinach, and injera. It’s considered a special meal, so it’s not eaten as often as some other dishes, but you can find it at specialty restaurants. Restaurants often offer a slightly cooked version, so look for that if you don’t like the idea of eating raw meat.

Another raw beef dish, gored gored, is made from cubed tenderloin or ground steak mixed with berbere and served with awaze (a spicy sauce) and mitmita. At some roadside restaurants, you can select the meat for your gored gored (or for tere siga, a dish of raw meat strips eaten served with bread or injera) from carcasses hung in the open. This ritual is called q’wirt, which means “to cut” in Amharic.

This chickpea-based dish was developed in response to local religious customs, as Orthodox Christianity and Islam (the country’s primary religions) both have fasting days when adherents abstain from meat. During these days of religious observance, cooks replace traditional meat stews with vegetable-based alternatives—like shiro.

This stew is made from dried, ground chickpeas that are simmered with berbere and water; the mixture can be a thin consistency, called feses, or boiled to a thicker texture, called tegamino. There’s also a version of the dish, bozena shiro, that includes diced cubes of meat—though this, obviously, is not served on fasting days.

Another meal popular during religious fasting periods, beyaynetu is a vegetarian platter that features various vegetable dishes all served together. The dishes most commonly included are a red lentil stew called misir wot, a split-pea stew called kik wat, gomen (collard greens or kale), dinich ena karat alicha (boiled potato with cabbage), shiro, and key sire alicha (potato, beet, and carrot stew).

If you’re looking for something to nibble on with coffee, look for kolo. The healthy snack is made by roasting barley with peanuts, nuts, and other seeds. While it can be made at home, it’s primarily available in markets—in supermarkets you’ll find it packaged in plastic bags of assorted sizes. It’s also sometimes served during a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

Tej is a honey wine that is made and served across Ethiopia. The three main ingredients are water, honey, and a shrub called gesho. The flavors of the wine change depending on how the fermentation is done and how it is bottled: some taste like dessert wine, while some are less sweet. The alcohol content runs between 7 and 11 percent.

While tej is widely available, it is advisable to only drink tej at reputable restaurants and hotels or on a specialized tour, to ensure the brew isn’t dangerously potent.