There are many things a restaurant critic fears. A ‘closed due to unforeseen circumstances’ sign in the window of a far-flung restaurant; a menu concept which requires all the mind-bending explanation of string theory; or maybe an untested plus-one who arrives with minimal chat and the tastebuds of a cautious toddler.
But what many secretly fear, not least me, is looking stupid.
A restaurant column is no longer tomorrow’s chip papers. Indeed, online reviews now have the half-life of Xenon-124. Namecheck the wrong aromatic in a particular sauce; declare a culinary twist to be a hallowed tradition; or assign the wrong cultural heritage to a dish? Your factual inaccuracies and gauche opinions will be ridiculed in perpetuity by generations of yet unborn pedants.
A writer’s only defences against such mockery are the simple sword of an educated palate, and, as a backstop, the trusty shield of Google. For the purists, the former is the key – if you can bring a wealth of experience to a meal, allowing you to discern whether a particular dish is correct or not, then of course people can still disagree with you. But importantly, you will know that they are wrong.
While it’s always exciting to explore an uncharted cuisine, critiquing it can be nerve-wracking too. So it was with Asmara Bella, an Ethiopian and Eritrean restaurant on the Piccadilly fringes of the Northern Quarter. The food culture of the horn of Africa is far from my specialist subject, so despite glowing feedback from diners my recent review visit brought a real sense of trepidation. It was just me and the instincts of my battle-hardened palate.
Well, me, my battle-hardened palate and Kya Buller, a Manchester-based publisher, writer and presenter. We became friends as members of the Soho House Manchester committee, and I knew her to be someone possessed of strong and articulate opinions – her tirade against my Generation X sock lengths was coruscating yet constructive. Even if, like me, she hadn’t eaten much Ethiopian food, I was certain she wouldn’t be phased by it.
Asmara Bella, owned by chef and entrepreneur Samrawit Tekle, sits on Port St in one of those rather knocked about Georgian terraces you find in that corner of the city. You can’t miss it, as it’s painted minion yellow like a Notting Hill townhouse. The ground floor is a tight little room, with dark woods and a tiled floor. A snug bar stands at one end, and the walls are dotted with Eritrean art featuring portraits of notable figures, landscapes and cultural scenes.
We began with sambosa, filled and fried pastry triangles akin to samosas. These diminutive examples came densely packed with a mix of lentils and vegetables spiced with cinnamon and cardamom. They were crisply fried, possibly in spring roll wrappers, and accompanied by a chilli dipping sauce. Along with an Eritrean lager and a malty Ethiopian beer, they were the perfect way to slough off the muggy and hectic day we’d left behind.
Main courses are based around stews and curries featuring beef and lamb, alongside a solitary chicken iteration. There is also a great vegan section, as the Ethiopian Orthodox Church prescribes fasting days when meat cannot be eaten. For maximum coverage, we ordered the bebeaynetu meat platter, effectively a taster of the menu’s greatest hits, which left me feeling a little like Alan Partridge selecting ‘The Best of The Beatles’ as his favourite Beatles album.
By now, seasoned eaters of Ethiopian cuisine will be bellowing at their screens because I’ve got this far into the review without even mentioning injera. Injera is a fermented and steamed flatbread, though with a pancake-like texture made from the indigenous teff grain. It’s foldable, spongey and slightly sour, and forms not only the bedrock of Ethiopian cuisine, but its cutlery and crockery too.
Our expansive injera arrived on a red, plaited basket with its edges folded back on themselves like a galette. Around its periphery, there were generous dollops of marinated lamb awaze tibsi and spinach tibsi, both fried with hot pepper sauce, and beef kitfo, finely chopped and cooked with herbs and paprika. A bullseye of derho, a chicken stew served with a boiled egg, sat in the centre.
Each dish was sweet with carmelised onions and honking with berbere, the signature spice blend of the region. It was all reassuringly familiar, with the notes of coriander, cumin and fenugreek nodding to the historical trading routes between Ethiopia, the Middle East and India.
The lamb and beef, cut from the leg and shoulder, had been simmered until tender but still had bite and chew rather than slumping like a ragu or pulled pork. Conversely, with the chicken drumstick the meat slid from the bone as gracefully as a gymnast’s dismount, to be scooped into yet more bread along with chunks of hard-boiled egg. We’d also ordered a bowl of fragrant shero, a creamy chickpea dahl.
The breads themselves were wonderful, the fermentation giving a tangy flavour akin to wholemeal sourdough. They had the structural integrity to cope with enthusiastic scooping, and the porous surface, pock-marked with bubbles like pumice, soaked up the sauces beautifully. Think of them as the East African equivalent of a Staffordshire or Derbyshire oatcake, albeit steamed, and you’re pretty much there.
Yet as we finished up (or rather didn’t, as portions are hearty and the value exceptional) that injera jolted me back to my pre-meal dilemma. Asmara Bella’s bread seemed like an excellent specimen, texturally firm and yielding rather than dry or gummy, with plenty of depth of flavour. But with my paucity of previous experience in this field where would I rank it on a wider scale of injera appreciation?
I could tie myself in critical knots over this, but instead let me echo the reassuring words of The Observer food critic Jay Rayner during his recent ‘Nights Out at Home’ event at HOME, as he answered an audience question about the potential pitfalls of reviewing a relatively unknown cuisine – “Fundamentally it comes down to this: Is it nice?”
Taking that wisdom on board I can say with confidence that Asmara Bella do what they do brilliantly, and Kya and I loved it. And in some ways, isn’t that enough? It serves beautifully flavoured, accessible and wholesome food in a relaxed setting, and does so with a happy confidence which sweeps you along for the ride.
Kya and Thom at at Asmara Bella, 37 Port Street, Manchester M1 2EQ
Petit Fours
- ‘African’ food, in its wider sense, is having a bit of a moment of critical acclaim, with Adejoké Bakare of Chishuru (a personal fave) and Aji Akokomi of Akoko in London both gaining Michelin stars this year. But these are West African restaurants and quite different from the East African cooking in places like Asmara Bella. In Manchester we seem stronger on the latter, and Rusholme’s Claremont Road is a hot bed of North and East African cuisine. Along its short length, you’ll find restaurants and cafes from Libya, Sudan, Somalia and Ethiopia, topped and tailed with cafes from Yemen and even the Caribbean for good measure.
- One of the current hospitality trends is for landlocked city centre restaurants to take on remote kitchen gardens to grow their own produce. The team behind Higher Ground and Flawd have led the charge in Manchester with their Cheshire farm, Cinderwood. Last week saw my first visit to Field 28, another boutique farm out in deepest Cheshire, which supplies restaurants and chefs ranging from Aiden Byrne to Gordon Ramsay. More to the point they co-own a Chester-based restaurant, Twenty Eight, which is a collaboration with Chef’s Table. The food is hyper-seasonal, popping with colour and flavour, and it’s attracted rave reviews from both Giles Coren and William Sitwell. If you’re in the cathedral city then do go.
- Whilst on the subject of Aiden Byrne, he and his partner, Sarah, are currently crowd-funding for their new restaurant, Li-Ly, in Knutsford. Aiden brings quite the cheffing pedigree, stretching from Tom Aiken’s and the Dorchester Grill to Manchester House and most recently The Church Green in Lymm.
- Staying with openings, Louis in Spinningfields, by the team behind Fenix and Tattu, opened its doors last week. It promises to bring something new to the city, and I’m expecting elevated Italian-American classics a la Carbone in New York or The Dover in London, served with lashings of atmosphere, live music, and a no photos policy. I suspect the latter point will be the hardest to deliver.
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