Piassa Restaurant
3096 North Decatur Road between Frances Street and East Ponce De Leon Avenue
Scottdale, GA 30079
404-717-4328
http://www.piassarestaurantmart.com
The Ethiopian tour of Atlanta continued, all thanks to our sponsor Scoutmob; I picked out Piassa from the other Ethiopian options on Scoutmob. Piassa is in a strip mall on North Decatur that seems to cater to a Ethiopian clientele. It’s actually both a restaurant and a small grocery store; you go through the mart to access the restaurant. When Dave and I showed up, there were a couple of guys at another booth, but that was about it. The heavy scent of incense washed over me, but thankfully it dissipated.
Our severs were sweethearts who made us feel welcome and were kind. Piassa’s menu isn’t what you’d expect, as there isn’t an appetizer section, just entrees and drinks. I guess that should have made it easier to select our dinner choices, but not really. After much debate, Dave and I ordered the veggie combo ($11.99), yebeg tibs ($11.99), and kitfo normal ($11.99).
Below is the kitfo normal on the left, and the veggie combo on the right, with spices at 12 o’clock and 7 o’clock. The menu states that the veggie combo has three options (yemisir wot, yekik alecha, and shero wot) but clearly, there are more than three items on the injera. And salad in the middle. Good deal. Embarrassingly, I do not know what the names of the veggies are. Thanks to Google, yemisir wot in a red lentil stew, which I’m guessing is the red spot on the picture. Go, powers of deduction. Yekik alecha is split peas, and shero wot looks to be a chickpea stew. All you need to know is that all the veggies were awesome, and some were even a little spicy.
The kitfo normal is “fresh ground very lean beef sauteed with spiced butter and mitmita [red hot powder] served with cheese.” Normally (haha), the kitfo is not well done, but the kitchen staff generously cooked it for us. Meskerem had performed this favor for us as well though I actually prefer Piassa’s kitfo to Meskerem’s as Meskerem’s was too buttery. Yes, there is such a thing as being too buttery. Sorry Paula Deen.
Here’s the yebeg tibs. The lamb is a smidgen on the overdone side, but the crispiness kind of adds to the whole deal. So yeah, a tad chewy, but the taste is delightful. Love these spices (not spicy). See the table? Reminds me of being in Mexico.
The servers kept the injera coming…no worries there about running out. What happened was that we had ordered too much food, but we didn’t fret since Ethiopian keeps quite well.
So to sum up, Piassa is a homey, welcoming secret-like delight. Yay.
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