Lovenest African Restaurant

Lovenest African Restaurant
Address: 183 King Street E, Kitchener  N2G 2K8
Open: Tuesday to Saturday
Cost: Lovenest platter for two with extra injera is $25
Contact: 519-570-0990; www.lovenestafricanrestaurant.com

Amuse-bouche: Part of the rich cultural cross-section of food that makes up dining in Kitchener’s downtown core. Injera bread and chacha and tibsi are traditional dishes. And then enjoy an Ethiopian coffee ceremony replete with incense and (wait for it) popcorn — yes popcorn.

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In a city that is growing in many sectors–and with a downtown core that is slowly and steadily coming wonderfully alive–among Kitchener’s culinary strengths are its so-called ethnic restaurants (that from a white, Eurocentric perspective). There are at least a half-dozen dining spots that touch down somewhere in the world other than Europe and North America. It’s a blessing we should be counting, I think.

Are things smooth and easily coalescing? No, not yet. Not completely. When it comes to a multicultural restaurant scene, there is work that needs to be done by both parties in the customer-restaurateur contract to see that understanding cultural differences and service each get smacked up a notch. But this is neither the time nor the place for that larger argument.

Coffee is roasted when when you order it.

Right now, it’s about a relatively new and small spot at the juncture of King Street east and Scott Street–Lovenest African Restaurant. Now, Africa is a pretty darn big place, so what we’re talking here is Ethiopian and Eritrean food from among dozens of other possibilities (Ethiopian, it might be said, is a specialty of Kitchener in a way).

The place is narrow with perhaps seating for 15 or 20 and decorated with the cultural artifacts of the country–including, seasonally enough, a Christmas tree. Good for them.

A Christmas tree and a holiday tree.

Standard church-basement tables and chairs run along one side of the dining room which is counterpointed with more traditional seating arrangements: that would be three or four chairs circling a wicker table with a lid onto which a communal meal is served. The arrangement is called a messob, and I would describe it as one of those interesting cultural moments and one with some charm and quaintness.

Lift the top of the wicker messob and your table awaits.

Sharing a meal with someone is always a highlight–or it should be–in our lives. But when you share the same plate, that makes it even more personal and communion-like. In fact, it changes the way you think about eating and sharing time, space, and food with someone else not to mention that it slows you down from over-gobbling and gives the apostate a chance to say, hey, I’m getting full and nicely satiated. That’s instructive.

The menu at Lovenest, like at many similar African restaurants, is broken into vegetable and protein dishes that are usually prepared in stews (wot or wet) with the very tasty fermented teff-flour flatbread called injera. By adding seasonings and spicings such as berbere sauce, mitmita chili and butter preparations, so an Ethiopian meal is served, communally, at the messob.

The injera is essentially a stand-in for knife and fork: tear off a bit of the bread and you eat with your hands (which is why the waiter informed me as to where the restrooms were so that I could wash my hands just about before I had even sat down).

Chicken, beef and lamb are prepared in a few ways by the kitchen–the results can be either mild or quite spicy, and I like that balance. There is a tendency for dishes to taste a bit too similar, but in all the dishes I have sampled at Lovenest each was cooked nicely.

Another popular Ethiopian dish is tibsi, cubes of tender lamb or beef with butter, onion and a  berbere awaze paste. Chacha is a beef dish with green or red peppers and onions, while kitfo is a minced beef with a spicy mitmita sauce. On occasion, cottage cheese and peanuts appear as accompaniments. Derho wet is a chicken dish in a deep, rich sauce that is paired with a hard-boiled egg.

The vegetarian side of something like the Lovenest Platter ($20) is comprised of two or three kinds of lentil (each of which were quite good), spinach or collard greens with a light cream sauce, chick peas, cabbage and ginger. A basic green salad with red pepper and tomato and simple slightly tangy dressing is a refreshing side, though it is odd to eat with the injera.

Injera is both the base for the lamb, beef, lentils and salad -- and the utensil for eating them.

The highlight of the meal, however, was the coffee. Take unroasted coffee beans, cook ‘em up in a pan, steep them into strong coffee and serve in a jebena, and that is part of a very interesting Ethiopian, Eritrean and Sudanese coffee ceremony.

A deep, dark roast for your coffee.

Next, add two small sini handle-less coffee cups and an incense burner throwing a heady, aromatic smoke. But the accoutrements don’t stop there: fresh, still warm, popcorn is also served on the coffee tray that lands on your messob.

Coffee is poured from the jebena amdist the incense.

Does popcorn work with coffee? It took me awhile to figure it out, having no baseline taste experience for the combination, but I think it does work oddly enough.

Now, with regard to the name Lovenest? Well, I just don’t know what to say about that.