Awash, Lower East SIde

My boyfriend and I are both sick, but sick in an annoying way where we can't just sit around and get better, we are dying to leave the house and do something fun, but while we are there we're just sniffling and coughing the whole time, and everyone is cursing us for potentially sickening them. We were in need of comfort food, and too tired to cook and definitely too tired to clean. I also need new shoes. My go-to shoes have had a hole in the toe for months and the people at my job are looking at me kind of weird. I didn't find any last night. To the internet! Any good sites for vegan shoes?

After striking out at Mooshoes we stumbled upon Awash, an Ethiopian restaurant on the lower east side, that we had passed by a time or two before and saw their menu. I love when Ethiopian restaurants have these 3 things: (1) They have a sufficient vegetarian combo-- not $50 per person, and not allowing you to pick 4 of the 8 dishes for your sampler. I need at least six. (2) They let you share. That is my favorite part of the experience. You get a mountain of food and know that you and whoever you are sitting down with is going to put all of it away very quickly. Plus, it's always cheaper that way. (3) It says specifically that all the vegetarian dishes are vegan as well. Clarified butter is often used in their dishes which just ruins everything and there's no way to know without asking if it's not stated on the menu. Now what bigger travesty could occur than having been seated at an Ethiopian restaurant, smelling all amazing, you're starving and anxious to shove your face with food by hand, and then you find out you can eat only salad and beets. Don't let it happen to you.

Of course we have a favorite Ethiopian restaurant. It's the most amazing restaurant in the world and I have made the argument for keeping my car on the road if only so that I can get to this restaurant with it. It's about an hour away and heavy traffic often ensues. Tonight, we were certainly not up for the rat race that is the Lincoln Tunnel, and tried our luck elsewhere.

Everything we got was familiar to us, except these little chickpea balls in the middle. At first I had worried they dumped some meat on our plate, but then crushed one with my hand and saw the powdery chickpea dust, and was relieved, then psyched to try it. Also our other place doesn't have avocado salad, which we ordered for the appetizer and loved.

I can never pick a favorite. At one point I thought misir wat was the favorite, then I went into a phase where I dreampt about shiro. At home, my favorite Ethiopian dish to make is always butecha and last night, I kept going back to steal more tikil gomen. Can you imagine getting only one? When feeling just a little under the weather, Ethiopian food stood as my perfect cure. It is really my favorite food in the world. Like the whole world, guys.