Neighborhood Guides
The Best Ethiopian Restaurants in Harlem You Should Try
A guide to the best Ethiopian restaurants in Harlem — injera, tibs, misir wat, and the spots keeping East African cooking uptown.
The best Ethiopian restaurants in Harlem tend to be the ones that don’t market themselves that hard. Ethiopian food is a communal, hand-eaten meal built around injera — the sour, spongy sourdough flatbread — and a rotating cast of stewed meats, lentils, and vegetables. It’s a whole night out. And Harlem is the neighborhood in New York that does it best.
What to expect from an Ethiopian meal
An Ethiopian dinner comes on one big platter — injera underneath, mounds of different stews on top. You tear off a piece of injera with your right hand, pinch up a bite of stew with it, and eat. There are no forks unless you ask, and asking is fine but not the point. Vegetarian combinations (the beyaynetu) are usually the best value on the menu and the best way to sample the range in a single meal.
Massawa: the Harlem classic
Massawa on Amsterdam and 121st has been the Harlem answer for over 25 years. The vegetable combination there is the pick — misir wat (spiced red lentils), gomen (collards with garlic), shiro (chickpea stew), and atakilt (cabbage and carrots), all on injera that’s fermented properly and has the right tangy bite. Meat-eaters should get the tibs — cubes of beef sautéed with onion, rosemary, and berbere. Wash it down with a bottle of Ethiopian honey wine (tej) if they have it in stock.
Meskerem uptown: a different, deeper menu
Meskerem in Harlem is the sister to the older Village location and it’s arguably running a tighter kitchen right now. The doro wat — chicken slow-cooked in berbere spice with a hard-boiled egg — is one of the great chicken dishes in New York, and the kitfo (raw seasoned beef, if you’re into it) is the one to order if you want to eat like the Ethiopian regulars at the next table. Coffee here is done in the traditional ceremony format if you ask — a small clay pot brewed at your table.
Zoma: the newer entry with a design-forward room
Zoma on Frederick Douglass Boulevard is the more modern-looking spot, but the food is not the compromise the interior might suggest. The Zoma special combination is a strong first-visit order, and the tej list is longer than most other Harlem spots. Good for a date, still traditional enough to feel like a real meal.
Awash: a Brooklyn shout-out worth mentioning
Awash isn’t in Harlem — it’s in Fort Greene and the East Village — but it’s the other Ethiopian answer in New York and belongs in the conversation. If you can’t get uptown, the Brooklyn location is worth the trip. Same combinations, same coffee ceremony, same warm room.
What to order on your first Ethiopian dinner
Order the vegetarian combination platter for the table. Add one meat dish — tibs is the safe bet, doro wat if the group is willing to eat with fingers and appreciate a proper long-cooked chicken. Order at least one bottle of the Ethiopian honey wine if the restaurant has it; if not, ask what beer they’d recommend from home. St. George is the standard Ethiopian lager and it goes with everything.
The coffee ceremony and why it matters
The traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony — raw beans roasted at your table over a small burner, ground in a mortar, brewed in a clay pot called a jebena — is the closing act of a proper meal. Not every Harlem spot does it, but at Meskerem and Zoma you can ask. Give it thirty minutes, don’t rush it, and take the small cups slowly. It’s the closest thing to a religious ritual in a New York restaurant.
Etiquette that matters
Wash your hands before eating — many spots bring a small basin of warm water and a towel to the table. Eat with your right hand only. Don’t touch the shared injera with a spoon you’ve had in your mouth. Sharing food from the platter is the point; it’s called gursha when someone feeds you a bite of injera-wrapped stew directly, and it’s a gesture of hospitality that’s fine to accept and awkward to decline.
Building a Harlem eating day around Ethiopian
Combine dinner at Massawa with a jazz set at Smoke or Minton’s, or with a walk along Frederick Douglass Boulevard. If you’re eating uptown more generally, our walking tour of Arthur Avenue in the Bronx picks up where Harlem leaves off. Every restaurant mentioned above is on the NewYorkEatsguide map.
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