If you like Ethiopian food (or if you’ve never tried it, you should) and you happen to be in or around Portland check out Queen of Sheba.  I love Ethiopian food, and they make some of the best I’ve had.  I went a couple of weeks ago, and it was fabulous.  Vikki and I had the vegetarian sampler, and everything was just right.  Spicy but not too hot, very flavorful, and everything was a little bit different.  Definitely a place where vegetarians won’t feel denied.  It’s gotten me all in the mood to make Ethiopian food at home, which I haven’t done in ages, but I just haven’t had the time to do all the prep work yet. 

If you want to try it at home yourself, I’d recommend checking out Exotic Ethipian Cooking by Daniel Mesfin if you can find a copy, Amazon seems to suggest it’s out of print.  My other favorite source for Ethiopian recipes is the rather unlikely source, Jeff Smith’s The Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors.  Check out your favorite used book store for copies of either.  Powell’s might be a good bet. 

I think the best Ethiopian food experience I ever had was in Washington DC.  Unfortunately I don’t remember the name of the restaurant.  There’s one block in DC that has no less than three Ethiopian restaurants, two across the street from one another.  I’ve been to two of them on various trips.  The last time was with Scott Hanselman and Joe Tillotson when we did the Gear.com roadshow. Scott ordered in Amharic (yes, it was impressive) so I’m not sure what I ate, but it was fabulous.  It’s a three story restaurant on what I vaguely remember to be the west side of the street, but I could be wrong about that.  I’ll see if I can come up with a name at some point.