DINING REVIEW: Uchenna serves excellent Ethiopian cuisine

When you walk into Maya Hetman’s new restaurant, you almost feel like you are walking into her home. The dainty and gracefully proper Ethiopian owner of Uchenna, which opened this spring in Old Colorado City, greets everyone with a very quiet hello and a complimentary thimble of iced tea laced with fragrant rose water. She even bows slightly as she takes orders and says, “It will be my pleasure.”

Trust me, the pleasure is all on the eating side of this new restaurant. To have the complex, nuanced and truly distinct cuisine of Ethiopia finally come to Colorado Springs is a treat, but to have it come in such an excellent form is simply a blessing. Everything is made from scratch with fresh vegetables and all-natural meats.

 There are no corners cut. Though a restaurant could get away with hot dishes of pre-cooked food, almost everything is made to order using family recipes and closely-guarded spice blends that Hetman was sent from family in Africa.

Ethiopian food has few peers. Though it was influenced by the spice trade, how it combined imports with native ingredients is starkly unique. It starts with the injera — a crepe-like bread that acts as napkin, fork, spoon and bread. A huge, flat injera arrives on a platter bearing steaming heaps of thick meat stew or vegetarian dishes ($8.25 to $12.50). Diners tear off pieces of the spongy bread and use them to scoop up their food (using the right hand only). After they’re done, they peel up the sodden but delicious injera under it all.

At first, it is clumsy work for Americans (inventors of the spork) and Hetman will not provide silverware without serious cajoling, but you soon learn she is right. You get the hang of it.

And Hetman’s injera is not just any injera. Most American Ethiopian restaurants make the flat bread from wheat with just a touch of a traditional ground seed flour called teff, that grows only in the Ethiopian highlands. Hetman makes her batter completely from the dark-colored stuff, which is packed with protein and gluten-free — and you can see the difference in the light, airy, somewhat sour results.

It is fabulous.

So is the food it carries.

No dish is perhaps so pleasing as a series of different wats, which are stews that start with a slow-cooked base of red onion and clarified butter that has been simmered with garlic, ginger, clove and other spices. To this Hetman adds berbere spice — a blend of powders that can include chili peppers, ginger, cloves, coriander, allspice and rue berries, but, like Indian curries or American barbecue, have uncounted secret combinations that vary from cook to cook. When slow-cooked chicken legs are added, the result is doro wat, and it is so rich and deeply complex that it could stand next to the best Mexican molés.

Not everything is as heavy or meat-centric. Many of the wats focus on lentils or chickpeas. Some dishes, like gomen besaega, have only a scattering of tender beef amid flavorful heaps of collard greens and onions.

Uchenna used to offer French and Mediterranean dishes but now focuses only on Ethiopian.
While the dishes tend toward spicy, they are neither too salty nor oily.

The one grumble diners often make is that service is slow — not just the preparation of dishes, but the time it takes to get a menu or take an order. This is slow food, and it should be, but Uchenna could take a few steps to speed things up. Even if they do, reservations at this six-table gem are a must.

So is dessert of homemade baklava. At first, after so much good wat, I tried to refuse. Then Hetman offered some for free. When I tried to refuse again, she looked at me, and in her quiet way, said “In my country it is not allowed to say no.”

UCHENNA
4 STARS out of 5
(spicy and sweet)
Address: 2501 W. Colorado Ave.
Contact: uchennalive.com; 634-5070
Hours: 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily
Entrees: $8.25-$12.50
Vegetarian: Extensive
Alcohol: No
Credit cards: Yes