Mesob: spicy, subtle and you won't forget it

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Food

Mesob: spicy, subtle and you won't forget it

Saturday, January 29, 2000

By PHUONG LE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

"Ethiopian food -- it is like Ethiopians," restaurateur Mandefro Lisanework said, attempting to describe the cuisine he and his wife dish up at their 3-year-old restaurant, Mesob.

"It's spicy and subtle," the 36-year-old said with a sly grin. "Most people, when they taste it, don't forget."

Lisanework and his wife Zufan Besha opened Mesob in the heart of the Central District with a goal of introducing Seattle to the flavors of their home country, Ethiopia.

"Ethiopian food is something different," said Besha, who left Ethiopia with Lisanework eight years ago.

The husband and wife team met during high school in Nazaret, a city 60 miles from the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa.

She learned to cook as a young girl watching her mother run a restaurant in Ethiopia. He learned to cook by watching her.

Together, the two have been serving up hearty stews and spicy dishes for about six years.

Mesob is the couple's second restaurant venture. Their first in Vancouver, B.C., was a tiny establishment with five tables.

Several years ago, the couple sold that restaurant and moved to Seattle, drawn by the large Ethiopian community here.

They headed straight for the Central District because, Lisanework said, "when people want to have Ethiopian food, they come to this neighborhood."

Initially, the couple worried whether they would survive the competition from numerous Ethiopian restaurants already in the Central District. But Besha said she ate at several places and concluded she could do better.

The couple opened Mesob with 10 tables and drew mostly those in the Ethiopian community.

These days, they attract both regulars and newcomers interested in sampling Ethiopian fare.

The restaurant's name, Mesob, describes a traditional Ethiopian table setting where a large woven basket is used as the base on which a large platter of food is set.

You eat family-style, with your hands.

The vegetarian dishes are the jewels of the menu, though beef, lamb and chicken are offered in many tasty varieties.

Gomen watt ($6.50), an entree of fresh collard greens mixed with herbs and cooked in rich spices, is a favorite. So too is the yemiser watt ($6.50), a puree of red split lentil with sauce of garlic, ginger and red peppers.

Sambussa ($1.50) leads off the short list of appetizers, a hearty mouthful of beef and lentils mixed with green chili and served in a hot crispy shell.

With the doro watt ($7.50), the tender chicken meat literally falls from the bone. It is marinated with a rich combination of hot red peppers, onions, ginger root, cardamom and nutmeg.

All entrees are served with injera, a flat, round dough made fresh daily from barley, wheat and teef flour (produced by grounding the teef seed, imported from Ethiopia).

Diners tear pieces of the injera and scoop up the vegetable or meat.

"The food brings back all the memories of home," Besha said.

P-I reporter Phuong Le can be reached at phuongle@seattle-pi.com and 206-903-0728.