Resto Review: Altaye Ethiopian Restaurant

pic grabbed from Yelp

Altaye Ethiopian Restaurant

8135 Rainier Ave S
Seattle, WA 98118

Kam Yelps

FYI: I am giving an alias to my husband since it is very tiring to call him "my husband" every post I make. Let's call him, Piano man :)

Piano man and I were craving Ethiopian food again during the weekend so we went back to Altaye in Rainier Ave. for the second time. Just to give you a brief background why this idea even came to mind, Piano Man has a lot of Ethiopian friends from grad. school and they introduced him to mind-blowing flavors that he will never forget. Ethiopian food is not very far from Filipino food, as they also use lots of garlic and onions, thus having a ginisa flavor. They also eat their food with their hands, just like how Filipinos eat Adobo over banana leaves.

A year after grad. school, Piano man suddenly remembered how he loved Ethiopian food after watching Top Chef Master Marcus Samuelsson (Congrats to him by the way, good job!) add berberi to one of his dishes. Berberi is an Ethiopian spice that has a very distinct flavor and smell and Piano man's Ethiopian friends add this spice to almost everything that they eat.

So after a tedious search through yelp (link posted at start of blog), I came across Altaye Restaurant, located in the not-so-fashionable area of Rainier Ave. We didn't mind about the ambiance actually, mainly because we used to walk the streets of Espana and Taft Ave in Manila which makes this place chicken; plus it was the food we were after in the first place.

Piano Man had only one dish in mind, the Kai wot, which was a beef dish that is very similar to caldereta only this one is spicier. I had the doro wot, which is the chicken version of kai wot and has more acidity. Both dishes paired very well with the injera, a sort of unleavened bread. We had yummy beef sambusa (pronounced samosa) as well which is a deep fried sort of empanada-like snack.

The verdict: 4 Stars. Very satisfying portions, the service was great and the food was wonderful!