Merkato Ethiopian Restaurant

Last year we went to Little Ethiopia in Los Angeles and enjoyed our first Ethiopian food dining experience at Merkato Ethiopian Restaurant, located at 1036 1/2 S. Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles. We were with Andrew and his friends Lauren and Lexi. The first thing that jumped out at us was that we were to eat without utensils: no knife, fork or spoon. We all ordered a dish and then it was served family style, all of the items placed side by side on a huge piece of grayish brown, spongy, crepe-like bread called injera. We had vegeterian (a number of different kinds of vegetables), chicken, lamb, beef and best of all, by far, fried trout. Our injera plate, below.

Injera is made out of teff flour, mixed with water, and allowed to ferment for several days. It is pliable, like a crepe, but thicker and has a sour taste. By itself, I did not really like the injera. But they give you big pieces of injera folded up, which you break off and use to scoop up food to eat. It becomes your eating utensil, much like you would use a tortilla. As alluded to above, the fried trout was incredible, maybe the best I've ever eaten. I believe it was deep fried and the frying sealed in the moisture. The skin was scored which made it easy to pull off the flesh in strips. The trout was dripping with moist goodness and taste. The rest of the food was good, but not memorable.

It is a very fun meal to do with a group because you are all grabbing from the same source and commenting on it as you go along. For me, it was unique to eat without utensils, and even though I did not love the injera, it was different and fun to try. However, the thing that will bring me back is the trout. I will have it again, and then try some other menu items to see if I can find any other hidden jewels.

Updated November 28, 2009:

Yesterday, we went again to Merkato Ethiopian Restaurant. This time we had Sam, Andrew and Dave & Bonnie Kenison. It is fun to have the wonderful diversity of Los Angeles nearby. The small area of town known as "Little Ethiopa" is marked by signs.

Merkato is surrounded by other Ethiopian restaurants, but we had such a good experience there last time that we decided to return.

The decor of the restaurant is fun with what I imagine is a very Ethiopian feel to it.

A lion and eland print.

A very different sort of warrior picture.

We were given large, folded pieces of injera to use as our utensils.

A closeup of the porous injera.

We were told that the Ethiopians like to eat the injera with butter, or butter and mitmita. Mitmita is a spicy powdered seasoning made of ground African birdseye chili peppers, cardaman seed, cloves and salt. I tried it and it was okay. I'm still not a major fan of injera.

Below is a bowl of mitmita (to the right) and awaze (to the left). Awaze is a paste of the same hot peppers, with garlic, ginger, salt and other spices. I found that I liked the mitmita better than the awaze. The awaze just had a different taste that perhaps needs to be acquired after multiple experiences with it.

Our meal below, set out on a large round piece of injera, on a large plate.

Our group at work (Sam is missing - a bathroom break). It really is a fun place to have a group meal because of the family style seating, without utensils (other than knives to cut the raw beef) and also because of the unusual dishes we tried that sparked lots of comment.

Per my earlier post, we had to try the fried white trout. It was again very good, but not as good as the first time. It had been cooked a little longer and was not quite as tender and juicy. It was still, however, very good.

As you can see, we picked it to the bone.

The trout comes with some vegetarian sides, including the beans below.

We tried the shrimp tibbs, shrimp with onions, tomatoes, green chilies and black pepper. It was nice.

One of the best dishes was the yebeg tibbs, cubes of lamb with onions, chilies and rosemary. The lamb came with some bones, was fairly well cooked (as in overdone), but was still good.

Sam ordered the dulet, spicy ground beef, liver and tripe, with butter, mitmita and onions. I have not eaten tripe in a long time, and I was more than pleasantly surprized to really love this dish, perhaps my favorite of all. I did not taste the tripe or liver at all and the general spiciness of the dish was very pleasing.

The tibbs were cubes of beef ribeye with tomatoes and green chilies. It was a little too mild and we probably ate less of it than any other dish.

The most unusual dish, and thus most fun, was the tere-sega, beef served raw with mitmita and awaze on the side. It appeared to be huge raw chunks of round steak.

We cut off relatively thin slices and then ate it with awaze, or other food. I found that I really liked it with the dulet or lamb on it. Everyone tried it, Andrew and I ate more than one of the big chunks of beef each.

Andrew wowed us all when he picked up a whole chunk of beef and started to knaw on it. The raw beef was so unusual, so difficult to cut and eat and so contrary to our western culinary sensibilities that it made it the most fun aspect of dinner.

This second visit to Merkato confirmed our first experience, a great place to take a group. However, the food this time was even better, overall, and made it a great cultural experience as well as a meal.

Great Basin Whiptail

When I first did this post I had just one picture of a Great Basin Whiptail, taken in Joshua Tree National Park. It is a subpecies of the Western Whiptail and is found throughout all of Nevada, western and northern Utah, southwestern Arizona and the northern three-quarters of Southern California.

This is the same picture zoomed in.

I find a lot of the distinctions of the various subspecies of whiptails hard to follow. I also take heart from the pictures on the internet of this subspecies and find that most of the pictures are not much better than mine. They are hard to approach in the wild.

On April 3, 2010, I was in southern Joshua Tree National Park near Carey's Castle. I saw quite a few whiptails, but they are very difficult to photograph. This one is in the shade of a bush.

A closer view of the head.

On May 15, 2010, I was in the vicinity of Carey's Castle again and got a few more photos of a whiptail.

 Here is a closeup of its hind legs

and one of its back and head.

Skilton Skink

The Skilton skink is a subspecies of the western skink and is found in western California, northern California, most of Oregon and eastern Washington. It also goes into mid-southern British Columbia. It has a slim body, small head, small legs and is smooth and shiny. It has three dark brown and light cream stripes. During the breeding season, adults develop reddish orange coloring on the side of the head, chin, the tail, and sometimes on the sides. This skink was caught by Jeff Brice in his garden in Redlands. It appears to have a little reddish orange coloring on the tail, head and chin.

From a different angle.

A dark brown stripe, edged with black, extends from the nose to the tail down the middle of the back. It is bordered by two pale stripes which extend from the nose above the eye to the tail. Two more dark brown stripes extend down the side, through the eyes, to the tail. Below is a close-up of the stripes on the back.

The pale white stripe over the eye.

A closeup of the tail.

The stripes on juveniles have an even greater contrast and they have a bright blue tail. We saw a juvenile Skilton skink on the trail up Mt. San Bernardino, above Angeles Oaks. I caught it and it dropped its tail. We got a poor picture of the skink, in my hands, before it got away.

I hold its detached tail, which it uses as a very effective diversion to escape.

Painted Desert Whiptail

The Painted Desert Whiptail is a subspecies of the Western Whiptail. This subspecies is found in northern Arizona, southern Utah and eastern Utah. This particular whiptail was found near Mooney Falls, near Supai, on the Havasupai Indian Reservation while with my father and brothers Matt and Chris.

The Painted Desert whiptail has yellow stripes, but the stripes usually stop short of the the hind legs.

Whiptails are extremely fast and wary and very difficult to catch.

A side view.
A closeup of the head.

A view of the underside.

A closer view of the belly scales.

The throat has small black spots, one of the distinguishing features of this subpecies.

Sierra Alligator Lizard

The Sierra alligator lizard is found in the northern portion of central California in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. While on a backpacking trip last summer, I found the following alligator lizards near Sunrise Camp in Yosemite National Park. The first thing that caught my attention was the yellow on the sides.

They have keeled scales on the back and sides, but the keeling is not as great as in the San Diego alligator lizard.

They also have keeling on their leg scales.

The upper coloration is olive-brown, bluish or greenish and there are usually no definate crossbands, as you find with the San Diego alligator lizard. The largest lizards are also more than an inch shorter than their southern cousins, from snout to vent, and they also have shorter tails. They live at a substantially higher elevation, up to 10,500 feet. These were found at over 9,400 feet.

The eyes are dark around the pupils, instead of yellow as in the San Diego alligator lizard.

This, smaller, lizard did not have the yellow side coloring.

The underside is yellowish or greenish.

A closer look at the belly scales.