The Blue Nile

FOOD

The vegetarian feast brings seven vegetable dishes together with injera. This is the core all-you-care-to-eat meal at The Blue Nile, and it gives lentils, split peas and greens as much attention as many menus give meat. The preparations differ in their vegetables and seasoning, with mild dishes beside those made with the restaurant’s spicy berbere sauce. It’s a compact selection with plenty to distinguish one helping from another.

Yemisir kik wat is the red-lentil dish, cooked with onions and herbs in spicy berbere sauce. It supplies one of the feast’s more assertively seasoned choices. Defen yemisir alecha uses green lentils with ginger, garlic, jalapeños, onion and mild spices. The two dishes show why a lentil course needn’t mean one familiar preparation repeated across the platter; the menu gives each its own character.

Kik alecha brings yellow split peas cooked with onions, herbs and mild spices. Metin shiro wat takes yellow split peas in another direction: they’re roasted and ground, then slowly cooked with spicy berbere sauce, onion and herbs. These aren’t merely different names for the same accompaniment. One centers whole split peas and mild seasoning; the other uses ground peas and the spicy sauce.

Gomen is the feast’s collard-green preparation, gently cooked with onions, ginger, garlic, jalapeño and spices. The greens give the platter a distinct vegetable course alongside the legumes. Their inclusion is part of what makes this a proper vegetable feast: several kinds of produce receive their own cooking, rather than a single mixed side being asked to represent the whole garden.

Tekil gomen uses green cabbage simmered with onions, ginger, garlic, jalapeño and Ethiopian spices. The cabbage is separate from the collard greens, just as the mixed-vegetable dish is separate from both. That latter preparation combines potatoes, carrots and green beans, stewed with the same aromatic family of onion, ginger, garlic and jalapeño. Familiar vegetables acquire a clear place of their own within the shared meal.

Injera makes all of those preparations practical to eat together. The soft bread is torn into pieces and used to scoop the food from the platter, so it belongs to the meal rather than being an afterthought in a basket. A bite can focus on a single vegetable preparation or include neighboring dishes. Refills keep the favorite parts of the feast in play as dinner continues.

The vegetarian dishes contain no dairy products or nuts according to the restaurant’s menu. Timatim salata and the other appetizer salads are separate orders, as are the chicken, beef and lamb additions. Those distinctions leave the unlimited feast easy to understand: seven vegetable preparations and injera, with optional extras for anyone who wants them. There is no need to add meat simply to make this dinner feel complete.