Normally, if food was served without utensils, on one big plate and on top of the bread, I would complain. This is, of course, how Ethiopian cuisine works, and Lalibela Restaurant is no exception. You don't get a fork, knife, chopsticks or a spork because you use your hands (traditionally your right hand) in combination with injera, a flat spongy bread made from teff flour.

Injera has been compared to a sourdough sponge (it carries a pleasantly sour taste), which comes from the water and flour fermenting for days. The bread is thin enough to eat mounds of it, but thick enough to scoop whatever you so please. Each meal comes with a heap of the good stuff, and thankfully so.

But what matters most in this review is what came on top of the injera. In Lalibela's case, it was small mounds of distinct and hard to pinpoint flavors combined in careful and surprising ways.

Our waiter (who not only gave us a history of the restaurant's name but also fixed the wobbly table with napkins) brought out the food with incredible speed. However, this could be owed to the night's unusual circumstance: Lalibela was serving a private party (and actually closed to the public) and wanted to hurry its kitchen. The private party itself was held captive by the standing presentation of one woman's heroic journey, from Ethiopia to the Israeli army to the United States.

Regardless, when the food came, it was clear that the cooks didn't hasten any of the preparation. Around the periphery of the circular injera-covered plate were the starters, the appetizers. We ordered atkilt salata (potato and beet salad with carrot, jalapeno skin and a special dressing), aterkik alicha (split yellow peas cooked with garlic and turmeric powder), gomen (collard greens in olive oil and herbs) and fasolia (string beans and carrots sautéed with caramelized onion and garlic). Although all of these had overlapping ingredients, none of the flavors agreed – this made it very fun to endlessly mix and match inside of an injera blanket.

The fasolia was the easy favorite with its sweet combination of fresh cooked veggies. I've never tasted beets that tasted so much like beets than in the atkilt salata; the beets were hard in a substantial way. The aterkik alicha made for a great sauce to mix with the protein dishes, the way hummus might work in a sandwich. It also had a beautiful orange-yellow hue. The collard greens (gomen), worked as a bitter backdrop of solid green roughage.

For the meats of the dish – placed at the center of the injera with their sauces and marinades spreading out to the side dishes – we ordered gored gored and doro tibs. Gored gored is usually a raw beef dish, although Lalibela's was not. The beef was blended in awaze sauce (a paste from peppers with garlic and ginger) and simmered in spiced herbal butter. It was somewhat surprising that the gored gored beef was cooked (perhaps slightly overcooked) given its usual raw form. However, the spicy drippings of the beef onto the injera made for remarkable tastes with the side dishes.

Doro tibs more or less means "chicken sautéed", and Lalibela seasoned with pepper, onion, mitmita (a spicy Ethiopian powder) and Ethiopian butter. While the chicken was well cooked, the entire dish had a surprising tomato essence to it. Whether or not there was actually tomato or it was just the combination of spices, it didn't have the same kick as the other dishes.

Given that the veggies were ordered last and as a side note, it was unanticipated that they would steal the show. The proteins were well-made and filling, but the unique flavors of each of the side dishes made for a dinner that constantly involved new tastes and mishmashes.

It's clear that Lalibela puts a lot of pride behind its food, and it comes through. It's the type of place that you'll need to visit a few times to figure out the best dish for you, but there could be worse things – each trip brings fresh tastes to the palette.