Muna's Ethiopian Cuisine, Edinburgh

Some cafes and restaurants have remarkable staying power. The Skinny has been putting money across the counter of the excellent east African sandwich shop Africano Wrap Place for over a decade at this point, and we won’t stop now. But some locations just don’t seem to have it. One of these is the bumper unit on Gillespie Place, as Tollcross turns into Bruntsfield, which has been so many things over the years we’ve lost count.

Its latest resident, Muna’s, has been open for a week and a half on our visit and it’s packed – if you want your restaurant to be a hit, it turns out spending several years making great street food at markets around the city is a decent marketing strategy. There are incredible aromas wafting around the room, and frankly enormous plates on each of the tables. Then there’s Muna, the eponymous matriarch, ducking and diving through the restaurant in a large hat adorned with an Ethiopian flag. She’s seemingly on a mission to say hello to every single person in the restaurant before duty calls and she’s off through the back as quickly as she arrived. She will return. Also all the lights have just flickered off and then back on again, but that’s probably nothing.

Ethiopian food, and this branch of Ethiopian food in particular, is built on the injera – a sour, spongy, fermented flatbread that sits somewhere between a pancake, a crumpet, a dosa and the gnarliest, truest slice of sourdough you’ve ever had. That’s what’s literally underpinning those enormous plates of food, and Muna’s injera is great. Bouncy, firm, super-sour and mercifully easy to tear, which is crucial. Tear off a bit of injera, and dip, squish or grab something other than injera into it. That’s the game this evening, and it’s one which this guy – noted fan of spice, fermentation and putting his hands in his dinner – is more than happy to play.

We pick out a selection of dishes, and they come as hefty dollops on a humongous, hubcap-sized injera. Key Wot is a spicy beef stew flavoured with berbere spices – chilli, coriander, fenugreek, the lads are all here. The result is fiery, savoury, and a little bit citrusy. The Tibs – a lamb curry with spiced butter – is the richer, milder and more decadent of the two. The Kik Alicha – a rich yellow chickpea stew with garlic and ginger – isn’t a million miles from a south Indian dal, but with a little bit more bite and an extra oomph that we can’t quite put our finger on. The Defin Misir Wot is a lovely, melt-in-the-mouth stew of brown lentils and onions, and the Gomen – a slow-cooked selection of greens topped with fresh herbs – adds a zip and a zing to whatever it touches.

And that’s the joy of this kind of eating – everything is touching everything else. You grab a piece of injera, scoop up a little Alicha and add a bit of the sauce from the Key Wot, and you have a spicy, earthy bite with a citric tang. Do the same, but swapping the Alicha for the Defin, and you get less of the turmeric low end but more of the spicy high notes. Those bright but sour greens, with that super-savoury lamb? Now we’re talking. Get that with a bit of the base injera that’s been slowly soaking up flavour from across the board, and you’re on to a winner. Muna’s back, and now shouting ‘is everything good?’ at a selection of diners from the kitchen door; endearing and efficient all in one move.

It’s all some combination of spicy, earthy, sour, rich and delicious, and by the end our napkins look like the Shroud of Turin’s cooler brother. We haven’t mentioned price yet, because that whole lot came in at £34.95. It’s an absurdly good deal considering the volume and variety on offer, not to mention the fact that – and don’t take this the wrong way, reader – there is no chance you're making five curries for yourself on a weekday night. Muna will, and they’re all really good.

We step outside into the evening and find Omar, the patriarch of the excellent and long-standing Khartoum Cafe right next door to Muna’s, outside with a pal. “How was it?” he asks, and we give him the short version of this review, including the bit about Muna dashing around the restaurant. He pulls out a low laugh: “She’s a wild one,” he says. With food this good, we can imagine that we’ll find out a lot more about Muna and her cooking in the months and years to come.

---

8 Gillespie Pl, Edinburgh, EH10 4HS
Tue-Fri and Sun, 2-10pm; Sat 6-10pm
@munasethiopiancuisine on Instagram