Meskel
2605 E Cherry St, 860-1724
Tues-Sun 11:30 am-midnight.

Plenty of restaurants close. Just recently we've said goodbye to Fandango, Cassis, and Bandol, not to mention the Wolfgang Puck Cafe. But not so many disappear. Not long ago, Meskel, the little hut that had become my favorite Ethiopian restaurant after I acted on a tip from a cabdriver, vanished from the corner of 12th Avenue and Cherry Street--just vanished. Several weeks ago, I drove around the neighborhood trying to find a relocated Meskel within the neighboring cluster of East African businesses, but it was nowhere to be found. I ended up eating an uncomfortable meal in a bar with a seemingly incidental dinner menu.

All the Ethiopian menus I've ever come across have been highly standardized; sometimes, it is hard to get worked up about one place over another. (There was the one rooftop Ethiopian restaurant t felt like nothing so much as a basement rec room from the '70s, the new Meskel has a pastel, carpeted living-room feel. Downstairs, where the drinking and dancing are done, is an entirely different vibe: There's a darkly wooded bar, with multiple big-screen TVs (showing golf when I visited), and fancy bathrooms, each boasting enormous toilet-view mirrors. I don't know how it missed this newspaper's recent 101 Favorite Restrooms issue.

The menu at Meskel extends beyond the standard wots (stews rich in berbere, an Ethiopian chile-based spice blend), tibbs (cubed-meat sautés), and veggie combos, and there always seems to be something special simmering up in the kitchen. We ordered one lamb dish that wasn't available, but were offered instead Gomen Be Siga ($9.99), a long-stewed melding of collard greens and lamb shanks. In the pot, the lamb had become so tender it fell into shreds, and the collards--stems and all--traded in their characteristic bitterness for a funky sweetness.

Of course, 90 percent of the fun of eating Ethiopian food comes from eating with injera, the pancake-like bread that food is served on and with. It's made from a grain called teff and leavened just a little with natural fermentation, which makes for lots of tiny stew-sopping holes. At Meskel, the injera isn't just a floppy, edible utensil, but a lively flavor unto itself. It lent a cool, pleasantly sour counterpoint to all of our slow-cooked stews.

When I eat Ethiopian food I have a hard time not ordering a veggie combo, because it gives noncommittal me a chance to flit from entrée to entrée, and also because Andrew loves lentils more than is really seemly. Meskel's veggie combo ($8.99) had two, maybe three kinds of lentils: earthy yellow lentils, spicy red lentils, plus a smooth purée that was maybe 70 percent butter, 10 percent spice, and something else that I've got to guess was puréed lentils. I drizzled it on a neighboring heap of collard greens for a very tasty combo. The plate also had the obligatory carrot/ cabbage mélange that's never the tastiest thing in an Ethiopian meal, but somehow serves as a mild touchstone for everything else. But my favorite veggie dish at Meskel remains tomato fitfit--partially, it is true, because I like the word fitfit, but also because I adore bread salads of all kinds. Tomato fitfit is essentially bread salad made with injera and some sort of spicy tomato purée. It is the perfect lively accompaniment to alternate with buttery bites of lentils.

Now that I know what it is like to love and lose, I am utterly grateful for the resurrection of Meskel. I won't let it vanish on my watch again.