Harambe

Another Ethiopian restaurant - and another step towards Addis Ababa. It seems that after a dodgy start, my experience of eating Ethiopian food in this city goes from strength to strength. Cafe Lalibela, Awash, the Abyssinian and now Harambe have all presented radically different environments for what are pretty much the same dishes with minor variations.

Harambe is the latest and has a character all of its own. Downstairs is a neon cafe; upstairs they take the Abyssinian's theme - the celebration of Ethiopian culture approach - and push it further. The large oval room is a strange, pinned-together riot of colourful woven tablecloths, traditional raffia tables, grey felt-lined walls and windows dressed with fans of tropical leaves. Somewhat incongruously, little plastic Aussie flags flutter everywhere.

Add a thatched ceiling and air-conditioning units and it all gives a feeling of being in an African beach shack celebrating Australia Day - which is a bit weird given that Ethiopia is landlocked and that outside the window it's Footscray after dark.

Then again, the name does mean "coming together as one" in Swahili (rather than in Amharic or Tigrignan) so perhaps this eclecticism is intentional.

For $15 you get a vegan vegetarian or a non-vego combo. We buy both. A large enamel plate comes lined with cold, tangy, pancake-like injera bread and is topped with five little stews of each variety. From the vego pots come two versions of braised lentils, some soft white cabbage cooked with carrots, yellow split peas with an interesting presence of thick slices of green chilli, some cooked-down silverbeet and a crunchy mix of cooked beans and shredded carrot. The flavours are clean and simple.

More complex are the five slow-cooked meat dishes. Best are beef mince coated in a gravy that's buttery from the addition of ghee flavoured with cardamom, garlic and Ethiopian herbs, some hunks of beef in a rich spicy gravy and a chicken curry with a sweet gravy hot from the traditional Ethiopian berbere spice mix - basically dried chilli and other warm spices such as cardamom. Both these last two are great scooped up against the cool sourness of the injera. Although the beef ration is good there's not much chook in our small serve of doro wot (curry).

Harambe also offers a couple of dry-cooked sauteed dishes such as lamb and green chilli as well as kitfo.

To further ignite the beach-shack feel, drink the Ethiopian beer and don't miss their house juice - mango marbled beautifully with guava and strawberry. They also do an Ethiopian coffee ceremony that's all incense and roasting the beans at the table for group bookings. Just don't be scared of the strange metal hospital trolleys they use to deliver food, which are at odds with the low-fi nature of the place.

Be aware also that the service can evaporate as the night wears on, but that's because at least a couple of waiters are probably downstairs doing their homework. It's very much a family restaurant.

What's more important is that the goodbye when you leave is as warm as the hello. That's very fitting. In Amharic, you use the same word for both: "teanaste'lle'n".