{"id":589,"date":"2004-04-23T15:18:37","date_gmt":"2004-04-23T23:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/?p=589"},"modified":"2004-04-23T15:18:37","modified_gmt":"2004-04-23T23:18:37","slug":"little-ethiopia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/2004\/04\/23\/little-ethiopia\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Ethiopia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are so many beautiful pockets in Los Angeles that, if you&#8217;re not careful, can go undiscovered. Last night, I visited Little Ethiopia, which is somewhere around the middle of the sprawling metropolis. It&#8217;s only 6+ miles from my house, but I rarely visit it. I get too caught up in my own little world.<\/p>\n<p>There are over a dozen Ethiopian restaurants on a 3 or 4-block stretch and, as far as I know, they&#8217;re all good. In fact, everyone has his favorite. Eric swears by Merkato. Rima takes her parents to Nyala. I went on a date, once, to another restaurant whose name escapes me and, while I like to forget many of the finer details of the evening, I do remember my date claimed it was &#8220;the best.&#8221; Last night, though, I was meeting my girlfriends at Meesob.<\/p>\n<p>I drove down Fairfax in search of green neon and twinkly lights, parked across the street and crossed with two well-dressed Ethiopian girls. Kris and Brittany were already waiting for me, ready to order. We ended up with a table covered in injera topped with sizzling grilled beef and chicken, mashed peas, collard greens, lentils and green salad. Everything was delicious.<\/p>\n<p>I appreciate the slowness of Ethiopian food &#8212; tearing off pieces of injera, then scooping up a morsel of grilled beef or sopping up some mashed peas. It reminds me of a restaurant in the Philippines called <i>Kamayan,<\/i> where dishes are served on banana leaves and you use your bare hands as utensils, molding rice into a bite-sized portion and sliding pieces of grilled meat off skewers.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s something calming about eating like that. You can&#8217;t shovel the food into your mouth or finish it in a few big bites. You have to take your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are so many beautiful pockets in Los Angeles that, if you&#8217;re not careful, can go undiscovered. Last night, I visited Little Ethiopia, which is somewhere around the middle of the sprawling metropolis. It&#8217;s only 6+ miles from my house, but I rarely visit it. I get too caught up in my own little world. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/maganda.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}