More false advertising from Taylor Gourmet? It turns out, the real mayor didn't show up for the fancy sandwich shop's grand opening festivities on 14th Street NW on Tuesday. When the operators said "mayoral ribbon cutting," they were apparently talking about these guys. [Twitter]

Forget paying 29 cents for water. The stuff from D.C. taps  is now free at Elisir; bottled water, meanwhile, will set you back $3.49. [Washingtonian via Eater DC]

Zuppa Fresca has opened in NoMa [Prince of Petworth]

Oh, truck it: those zany Fojol Bros. are at it again, this time with Thai food. [Washingtonian]

The whipped cream variety is nothing: flavored vodkas may only get stupider in 2012. [Post]

Tips from a hipster dieter: eat Ethiopian, drink Miller Lite and avoid Five Guys fries at all costs. [Express Night Out]

What would MacGyver do in this situation?

Video courtesy of YouTube

Photo by Richard from Kansas City/Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

When I shook the hand of Eyod Tekalign Tolina, who heads up economy and business issues for the Ethiopian embassy, in the chancery's elevator on Tuesday morning, I had just hoofed it a half mile in the cold, frosty weather. He told me my hands were freezing. "Perfectly timed weather to try some Ethiopian coffee," I replied, sparking a smile from Tolina. I was at the embassy to try some coffee at a press event to announce a licensing deal with a local distributor to sell unroasted Harar coffee from Ethiopia at 120 Giant supermarket locations in the District, Maryland and Virginia.

When the elevator doors opened on a lower level overlooking a wooded ridge behind the embassy complex, the strong smell of incense greeted us. I thought to myself: Is that what Ethiopian coffee smells like? Not quite.

Sonia Bunch, propriater of Silver Spring-based Pride of Ethiopia, and Tolina told us about the deep affinity Ethiopians have for coffee, the origins of which can be traced back to when, according to legend, a goat herder from Kaffa noticed how excited his animals got after eating the coffee plant's red berries.

But there's one key difference in how Ethiopians enjoy their coffee that may seem like too much work for Americans. The beans are roasted at home as part of a ceremony, complete with incense. Not your quick and easy cup of Joe, for sure.

Bunch, keeping in mind that roughly 200,000 to 300,000 Ethiopians live in D.C. area, is selling the beans unroasted, the way most Ethiopians—and a growing segment of home-roasting American consumers—prefer.

An affiliated company of Bunch's already sells Ethiopian coffee at Giant, but it's a Yirgacheffe blended with coffee from Central America. "After one year of doing taste tests in Giant and communicating with people who drink coffee, we kept on hearing one message from the Ethiopian community over and over again and it was message I couldn't ignore," Bunch says. "They wanted to see the Harar coffee in Giant. ... [A]fter a hundred e-mails and several comments from Ethiopian coffee drinkers who follow us, we decided to respond and to bring in the Harar."

Tolina calls the Giant-Pride of Ethiopia deal "an entry point," something that fosters the "love affair" his people have with coffee. (He also stressed how deals like this help small farmers in Ethiopia, whose government has tried in recent years to reduce poverty, increase access to safe drinking water, and cut infant mortality.) There's already an established local Ethiopian market that wants easier access to unroasted Harar beans, and there's enough of a current niche interest from home-roasting Americans, so there's room for growth. Coffee lovers in Saudi Arabia and Japan seek out Harar coffee, and the Ethiopian embassy would like the same to happen the United States.

Following remarks from Bunch and Tolina, we sampled some of the coffee being prepared in traditional Ethiopian style in the next room, complete with roasting pot for the beans, a jebana pot for serving, and in this case, a bowl of popcorn for snacking.

As Bunch says, Harar is a coffee "that doesn't bite back." I was able to enjoy my cup without sugar, though it is customary to have some sweetener. I wanted to taste the coffee in its purest form and didn't need sugar to complement the rich and deep characteristics of the Harar beans. It had a smooth finish to stand on its own.

Bunch says a 12-oz container of unroasted Harar beans from Pride of Ethiopia will retail for just under $10, a price point Bunch says Ethiopian consumers indicated they would be willing to pay for high-quality coffee from their homeland.

Will home-roasting coffee catch on with American who have been pampered by Starbucks or a Keurig cup machine? That will take some time, for sure. But waiting for excellent coffee is totally worth the time invested.

Photos by Michael E. Grass

The Spot: Ethiopic Restaurant, 401 H St. NE, (202) 675-2066

The Cuisine: Ethiopian

The Go-To Dish: Ethiopic signature kitfo (raw, preferably)

The Scoop: Philly's got cheesesteaks, New York's got pizza, and D.C. has damn fine Ethiopian food, much of which I have had the pleasure to sample. I was curious how the latest competitor, Ethiopic, would compare to the established players in Little Ethiopia and beyond.

Situated on the corner of 4th and H Streets NE, Ethiopic is a chic joint, its style a microcosm of the creeping sophistication that has overtaken the Atlas District. Exposed brick, ambient lighting, and a visible and extensive wine rack (down to its Ethiopian blends) lend the restaurant a cozy but refined ambiance.

My companions and I ordered the signature kitfo, lamb tibs, and the miser wot (pureed split lentils simmered in a red pepper sauce). When I asked for the kitfo raw, our waitress gave me a double take and then double-checked to make sure I really wanted it uncooked. She mentioned that most patrons are weary of raw kitfo (the beef tartar mixed with a spicy butter known as niter kebbeh can be served either raw or cooked), but I reassured her that raw is the only way for me.

I wish our waitress would have been as worried about our wait times. Once she finally brought the food out, our orders arrived in separate bowls, which she then emptied onto a large serving of injera. Although each plate was about two or three dollars more than what you would find at Dukem or Madjet on U Street, the portions were also much larger.

I think it's safe to say the kitfo here is the best I've tried — by far.  Though raw, the fiery tartar was slightly warm and accompanied with in-house freshly made cottage cheese. The lentils were also good and came with a spicy kick of their own, which paired nicely with the slightly sour injera. The tibs however, were disappointing. The dish was perfumed with a heavy dose of rosemary, obliterating many of the other flavors.

The Verdict: With the exception of maybe Meskerem in Adams Morgan, Ethiopic offers the best Ethiopian I've tried. With most plates around $15, the quality of the food is enough to compensate for the money you might have saved by dining on U Street or Ninth Street NW.

Last Saturday at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, the self-proclaimed traveling culinary carnival that is the Fojol Bros. of Merlindia unveiled the latest member of their troupe: The Fojol Bros. of Benethiopia.

Today marked the truck's debut on the streets of D.C., and I got a chance to catch it for a good, old fashioned federal employee-style lunch at L'Enfant Plaza. As the first Ethiopian food truck in the area, Benethiopia is serving up fresh injera with both meat and vegetarian options, such as beef berbere, beets and beans, berbere lentils, and collard greens. The menu also boasts what the Fojol Bros. call a sunflower injera salad, which mixes small pieces of injera with slightly cooked sunflower seeds.

The folks over at Fojol were kind enough to make me a sampler platter of most of their dishes, spooned over some hearty injera. Everything had great flavor, but the berbere lentils were by far the best thing on my plate. They have just the right amount of spice, which soaked into the injera splendidly. The beets and collard greens also make for a delicious vegetarian lunch.

Compared to some of the sit-down Ethiopian restaurants around the city, a Fojol Bros. lunch is pretty easy on the wallet. The two-meal option with injera is just $7 or you can get three for $9.

As is the custom with Ethiopian cuisine, no utensils are provided, but the Fojol Bros. do include a moist towelette with every meal. The truck also features a built-in sink to rinse your hands after stuffing your face. The new Ethiopian truck is practically identical to its predecessor and traveled alongside each other today.

Benethiopia does not have its own Twitter handle just yet, nor is the menu mentioned on the Fojol Bros. website, but its location can be tracked by following the original Fojol Bros. Twitter feed.

The Spot: RAS Restaurant & Lounge, 4809 Georgia Avenue NW, (202) 291-2096

The Cuisine: Ethiopian, Caribbean, Jamaican

The Go-To Dishes: Bake and shark, gouda grits

The Scoop: About a month ago, I had stumbled across an article on Thrillist about a new place in Petworth called RAS. It's a Rastafarian/Ethiopian themed restaurant combining flavors from Africa and the Caribbean.

It recently came to my attention that, as part of RAS's menu, the joint serves a dish called bake and shark, which is deep-fried shark stuffed into fried bread and topped with lettuce, tomato, and mango chutney. Bake and shark is a Trinidadian dish, served from little huts on the island's beaches. So when I found out that I don't need to fly to the Caribbean to try it, I grabbed my coat and raced to RAS before Andrew Zimmern could beat me to it.

The bake and shark aside, RAS is actually a pretty cool joint itself. The place is still in the process of acquiring a liquor license, which will certainly help business at the built-in bar, not to mention the space for open mike and live reggae music. RAS was pretty empty when I walked in on a weekday evening, but my friendly waitress Mary informed me that the crowds differ by the day.

The only real problem was that I wanted to order more than just the bake and shark after checking out the menu. But Mary put my worries to rest and offered to make a combination plate of Jamaican jerk chicken along with Ethiopian lamb tibs on injera. I also asked for a side of gouda grits and a Jamaican ginger beer (though a Red Stripe would have been a way better option, alas).

Without any reservations, I can say that the bake and shark was everything I wanted and more. The deep-fried shark meat was full of flavor and the mango chutney served as the perfect complement. It becomes a bit of a mess toward the end, as the fried batter begins to fall apart, but it's just as good with a fork.

The other plates were either hit or miss. The lamb tibs were tasty, but nowhere near as juicy as those made by RAS's Ethiopian counterparts along 9th Street NW. The Jamaican jerk chicken seemed subpar, since it came with a container of jerk sauce on the side, which could have used a bit more kick. However, the gouda grits were absolutely excellent and made for a terrific side dish.

The Verdict: RAS is a great addition to a string of innovative new spots up along Georgia Avenue. The bake and shark is an absolute must and an interesting eat to say the least. But you can definitely find better Ethiopian and Jamaican options throughout the city.

If you want to understand the difference between Meaza and every other Ethiopian joint in the area, just look down at your table. That spongy pancake dimpled with about a zillion little moonlike craters? You know the name: injera. Owner Meaza Zemedu makes her own in house, which, in a certain sense, makes Meaza the Ethiopian equivalent of Restaurant Eve, CityZen, Palena, and other high-end temples of gastronomy that bake their own loaves. These restaurants all understand you don’t put your bread service in the hands of inferiors. Zemedu, like any quality kneader, doesn’t mix just a single dough. One of her flatbreads is prepared with wheat flour, another other with traditional teff. The latter starts sour on the palate and resolves into an exotic nuttiness, so complex and so unlike every other injera that graces tables around Little Ethiopia. It’s worth the extra $2. The bread, like a generous squeeze of lemon, adds an acid note to almost everything you eat at Meaza. Try it with Zemedu’s generous mound of raw kitfo, as hot as its smoky firebrick color suggests but tempered with loads of soft Ethiopian butter. Or try it with her doro wat, as dark as mole, which is just about the only local version of the so-called Ethiopian national dish that deserves the honorific. Or try it with one of the dishes that hasn’t yet entered the regular rotation along 9th Street NW, such as Zemedu’s slabs of raw cow round served with awaze sauce, which is evidence enough that dining at Meaza may be the closest thing Washington residents have to tearing flatbread together at a small, ceremonial dinner in Addis Ababa.

5700 Columbia Pike, Falls Church (703) 820-2870

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

1924 9th St. NW (202) 319-1924

I'm not sure that you can call it a renaissance yet, but Georgia Avenue keeps showing signs of life — at least in terms of more eating options. I drive this strip regularly and have noticed a few new storefronts popping up, including Washington Deli Pizza, the latest property from owners Jim and Debbie Doherty.

The operation draws its inspiration from New York in that it combines elements of a Jewish deli and an Italian by-the-slice joint. I'll be interested to see how it plays in Brightwood.

The other joint, located next to Moroni & Brothers, looks like some sort of Ethiopian operation. Best I can tell, it's called Ethio Jam, and it's promising "fine dining." Perhaps a lounge setting too?

Anymore know more about this place?