The bad news: Service can be extremely brusque, at least until it’s time to pay the bill when it’s all smiles and niceties. Also, most of the meat dishes taste like they were plucked from a rusty can of Dennison’s Chili. In fact, the last time I went camping and ate chili out of a can pitched in the campfire, I thought of Axum.

The good news: Axum elevates itself to 4 stars with the oft-mentioned vegetarian platter. Dirt cheap, plentiful, and oh-so-tasty.

I’m still not a total fan of the injara bread, but I can overlook it when I’m using it to plow into the wide assortment of veggie delights piled on top of it. Be careful, though - since you’re sharing the plate, you could get very competitive with your eating partners for every last morsel and wind up in a brawl. Or eat their fingers.

So much for going vegetarian…

I felt like I was back on The Continent when I ate here…in a good way.

Axum Cafe really excels at serving an awesome, authentic, and cheap Ethiopian dining experience. The only way to go about eating here is to grab a vegetarian platter (to serve the number of people you’re with) and to throw in a couple of meat dishes.

The vegetarian platter is an incredibly tasty choice and consists of a number of different sauteed vegetables (potatoes, carrots, cabbage, jalapenos, spinach, tomatoes, garlic), fungi dips (mushrooms), and pureed beans (chickpeas, lentils). The different choices are all perfectly seasoned (with cumin, garlic, salt, pepper, chili, etc). It’s all served on a huge plate and everyone is given a crepe-like bread. That and your hands are the only utensils you get. The platter is huge and everyone just goes apeshit when it comes out.

For our meat, we got the tibsie chicken which was awesome and so perfectly tender and just the perfect complement to the vegetarian platter.

It’s a tasty, casual, affordable and overall great meal and the chance to go with a big group of friends rounds out the perfect social dining experience.