Fasika
Twin Cities, Minnesota

I love Fasika! We're regular visitors and the staff is super friendly and all the ladies who've been there a while could place our order without us saying a word (we're predictable). We get a friendly 'hi guys' when we hit the door and great service.

I am in BIG LOVE with the split peas, personally. I actually don't even LIKE peas but I adore how Fasika cooks them. Yum. Our usual is the split peas and an order of the stew, which is served with a scoop of delish mustard greens, too. I've had other Ethiopian that was good but my heart belongs to Fasika!

Various people I've spoken to have suggested that Fasika serves the best Ethiopian food in the Twin Cities. Those people are correct. Fasika is easily the best Ethiopian restaurant in the Twin Cities.

While they don't have too many veg. dishes, what they do have is delicious, and prepared with grace and quality. The menu states that all the vegetarian dishes are "100% vegan" which was a nice touch; kudos to the owners or to some previous vegans who managed to get that labeling added and understood.

My friend and I split a "miser wot" ($8.50; lentils with berbere sauce) and another lentil dish with unlisted spices (also $8.50). Both were excellent. The miser wot was spicy without being overpowering and tasted fresh and light. Similarly, the other lentil dish we had was served hot (temperature-wise) and had a perfect, delicate balance of garlic, onions, jalapenos and other spices; it's rare that one finds such a perfectly executed dish. More over, other Ethiopian restaurants I've been to have a hard time maintaining the freshness, texture and temperature of the food they served---dishes come out lukewarm, mushy or with an aura of day-old leftovers. Not so at Fasika, where everything was popping, bright and flavorful.

The injera that came with the dish was ample and tasty, without being overly sour. This was the first time I've been to an Ethiopian restaurant where I actually ate all of the injera that they gave me.

The service was warm, friendly and unobtrusive. They also gave out free small cups of coffee to every table. My only gripes are that the ambience was lacking (it seemed kind of bleak and bland like every other Ethiopian place I've been to), and at least for the beginning of our meal, there was some super-strong incense burning right in the middle of the restaurant that made it difficult to breathe. Regardless, I will definitely be coming back to Fasika in short order.