Dinknesh Lucy – Dani Valent

227 Barkly Street, Footscray, 9687 8644

My score: 3/5

In many parts of the world sharing food is simply the done thing, not a new dining concept that needs to be explained by a waiter. So it is in Ethiopia where food is scooped from communal dishes with injera, a fermented flatbread. Sometimes stews are simply spooned over injera which acts as both plate and utensil. Many Melbourne diners aren’t cool with that so at Dinknesh Lucy food is spooned from communal dishes onto individual plates then mopped up with torn pieces of injera, no further cutlery necessary.

Mulu Tiruneh’s welcoming five-year-old restaurant (next to Lentil as Anything, and with car parking out the back) is named after an early hominid skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and estimated to have lived more than three million years ago. Dinknesh translates as ‘wonderful’ or ‘amazing’. There’s nothing fancy about the venue with its plastic tablecloths and paper napkins but the décor is jaunty and Mulu is a friendly host, happy to offer recommendations of the dishes she makes with care and enthusiasm. A tiny stage is set for coffee ceremonies (book ahead) and there’s Ethiopian dancing on busy nights. We made do with the TV in the corner, which showed exhausting looking, slightly disturbing weapon dances.

Everything I ate was tasty. A mild chicken stew featured small chicken drumsticks in a clear broth. The meat was tender and juicy, the soup dotted with silverbeet. It was a gentle and sustaining dish, the African version of chicken soup for the soul. More robust was the bozena shiro, a casserole of cubed lamb in a gravy thickened with spiced chick pea flour. A vegetarian combination was served in a compartmentalised steel platter and featured braised beetroot, spiced chickpea flour paste, cabbage fried with onions and ginger, and spiced red lentils.

Mulu makes injera fresh for every meal which isn’t as common as you’d hope in Melbourne’s African restaurants. She rolls her circular breads like washcloths on an airplane and delivers them to tables with every meal. Injera are slightly sour, very absorbent (all the better for sopping up) and alarmingly filling. Contributing to the filling factor is the clarified butter that thickens many Ethiopian dishes. Add to this the very low prices and you’ll discover it’s hard to spend more than $15 a person on food here. So Dinknesh Lucy is cheap and cheerful, ensuring a dinknesh meal indeed.

Click here to visit their website .

More food to share:

Grosvenor Hotel, 10 Brighton Road, St Kilda East, 9531 1542
Plans at least three days ahead to enjoy roasted suckling pig, presented whole at the table for the slavering enjoyment of around a dozen pork fans.

Guhng, 19 McKillop Street, Melbourne, 9041 2192
Korean barbecue is best tackled with a group so you get to sample more dishes and, of course, discuss barbecuing techniques. Try the ox tongue and the spicy pork belly.

Longrain, 44 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne, 9671 3151
Serving up tasty Thai since 2005, with most of it designed to share. Consider the smoked turmeric chicken and the whole fried fish with chilli, lime and tamarind.

First published in The Age, January 27, 2013

2017-09-18T17:11:17+10:00

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