Meskerem Ethiopian Restaurant - (404) 417-0991

I have been to many ethiopian restaurants, and this one, MESKEREM IS THE BEST. It used to be on Cherhire Bridge RD. and reopened on Clairmont RD. in Atlanta. I find this establishment to be truly authentic, the injera bread that you scoop up your plate of food with, traditional music of ethiopian playing, all is wonderful. It is also family owned. They put much heart and soul into the place, I was a weekly regular at the first location. My husband and I have tried other Ethiopian places, but Meskerem remains the best.

I have to say that the food was pretty good, but the service was horrendous! After sitting for 10 minutes, our waitress finally came up and I asked for a recommendation since we'd never eaten their before. She recommended (and we ordered) 1, lentil sambusa, 1 beef sambusa, a meat combination tray and an order of Tikil Gomen. What finally showed up about 20 minutes later was a vegetable combination tray. Okay, so we thought, well, maybe this comes with the meal that we ordered. We waited and waited, finally the manager or owner came by to asked how everything was. We told her we hadn't gotten our appetizer or our meat course. Finally, we got 1 of our appetizers and the meat combination tray. Then we waited another 20 minutes for it to get cleared and get our bill. I couldn't tell you what we ended up paying for. I was soooo ready to get out of the place I just payed the bill and left. Hugely dissappointed. The only way I would eat there again is as a TO GO.

The food was great. I went there a little after 10 on a Friday night, and the music was so loud, it was very disturbing. More than half of the restaurant was empty, but the music was played as if it were for a 1000 people. I could hardly enjoy the food because of the high volume music, I left in a hurry and more than half of the food I ordered was wasted. I thought the music was good, but the volume was too high it would seem like noise. I did mention this to the waitress, but she said the jockey would not listen to her even if she asked him to reduce the volume. I would recommend this place if not for the disturbing high volume music. I have been to several Ethiopian restaurants before, in the US and in Canada, and everywhere the traditional music they play in the background in a soft volume was always enjoyable. This place really scared me, I would never want to go there for dinner.