Ethiopian for Lunch?

Skyline Cafe
3821 S George Mason Dr
Falls Church, VA 22041

Page 1 of menu with no descriptions

A few people in the office were going to Skyline Cafe for lunch.  Initially I passed on the offer.  I think when I was 7 or 8 my dad took me to an Ethiopian restaurant (it may have been a completely different cuisine, but all I can remember is that the main course was a glob of something that was served on a banana leaf with no utensils).  I guess you could say that experience scarred me for life, but upon "further review of the play" I reverse my decision and decided to go because it would be good team building as well as great meal to review on this blog.  I had heard of the infamous injera aka Ethiopian Bread.  Someone in the office compared eating it to "chewing on a neoprene suit."  Mmm sounds delicious right??  The injera is a spongy chewy flatbread made with yeast and some sort of unique type of flour.

Page 2 of menu with no descriptions

Skyline Cafe is conveniently located just a block or two away from work.  So close in fact we actually walked there.  Skyline Cafe is situated in a very diverse strip shopping center.  One could easily get confused as to which restaurant is Skyline Cafe because frankly they all seem to be Ethiopian or something else very "exotic."  I guess there's technically only one other Ethiopian restaurant in the same strip mall, but there are several other middle eastern restaurants.  I think one of them is Egyptian, I'm not sure about the others.

Page 3 of menu with no descriptions

The restaurant itself is very small and doesn't seem to accommodate large parties very well.  We managed to get a large enough table to seat 6 people.  We were expecting a vegetarian lunch buffet, but for some reason there was no buffet on the day we went.  Maybe it's hit or miss?  There's a big sign on the front door that says there's a daily buffet for $8.99.  Maybe this wouldn't be too bad afterall.  Some of the diners were a little apprehensive about going to a vegetarian only buffet.  They like their meat!  Half of our table got a vegetarian platter for 3 and the other half of the table got a meat platter for 3. 

Drink page of menu

After placing our order we waited and waited and then waited some more.  The restaurant didn't seem that busy.  After I think 40 minutes of waiting someone finally asked where our food was.  Our waitress said 5 minutes, but only a few moments after walking into the kitchen she emerged carrying both platters of food.  It makes us wonder if the food had been prepared a long time back and they just forgot to go check to see if it was ready.

The platters that our food was served on were very large!  On the vegetarian platter there were spicy brown lentils that were surrounded by what looked like yellow lentils, chopped up greens (I think it was spinach - or something else green, maybe collard greens?), salad, and then some type of veggie curry. 

Meat Platter

The surrounding dishes repeated 2 more times around the perimeter of the platter.  The meat platter featured some type of chicken and hard boiled egg dish.  I guess the eternal question still remains: which came first: the chicken or the egg?  Surrounding the chicken centerpiece were 2 different lamb dishes (we had to ask, we thought one of the meats might have been beef) and the chopped up greens described above.  One of the lambs was spicy and the other was not.  One of the hard boiled eggs was really over cooked and dark green from the sulfer in the egg.  I think this happened because the eggs were overcooked since they were twice cooked: hard boiled and then cooked again after being peeled and put into the gravy (sauce).

Vegetarian Platter

The verdict?  Don't bother coming here if there's no buffet and you have a limited lunch break.  The food wasn't bad and the spongy bread wasn't as bad as others have made it out to seem.  Some of the dishes had a little bit too much heat in them, but they were nothing like Biryani Point.