*** unfortunately, this restaurant is no longer open ***
one of the reasons i love montréal so much and would never want to leave is that we have variety when it comes to food. you can find everything from the mundane to the exotic. to experience the latter, i had dinner at magdala. this was my first taste of ethiopian food and i left totally satisfied. i even woke up the next morning craving the flavours from the horn of africa.
first things first: this is the type of communal dining that you really want to experience with people with good hygiene as you will all be using your hands to dig in to the same big platter.
we were four people and we each ordered a dish that we shared:
- ye doro wat – fall-off-the-bone chicken drumsticks and a hard-boiled egg simmered in spicy berbere sauce
- tibs – slightly dry beef cooked in spices
- ybeg key wat – tender lamb stewed in berbere sauce
- beya yenetu – a vegetable combo comprising of missir wot (red lentils stewed in berbere sauce), kik alitcha wot (chickpeas), gomen (collard greens), and atkilt wot (potato, carrot, cabbage, onion)
all of this was served on a big injera-covered platter with rolls of injera on the side. this sponge-like, slightly tart teff flour bread is used to pick up the food and is great to soak up the sauces. it was served cold, which i found odd at first, but in the end i didn’t mind because it provided a contrast to the warm food and the taste and texture played nicely on my taste buds.
everything was good, but the dishes that will keep me going back for more are the ye doro wat, the missir wot, and the gomen (which i suspect was actually spinach). my least favourite were the tibs that tasted like regular bbq beef and the kik alitcha wot, which were undercooked.
what i really like about this cuisine is the variety of tastes that come with your meal. red chilies, ginger, cardamom, turmeric, paprika, cinnamon, and other spices all contribute to making the food complex but not overpowering. i’m drooling just thinking about the flavours teasing my tongue.
at the end of the meal, i was too full to even have coffee, but if you are visiting this place on the weekend, they have a full coffee ceremony on offer. next time, i will be sure to experience it.
the service was friendly, if a little absent. because we were a group of four and all the tables on the ground floor seemed to have been reserved, we settled into our “thrones” on the second floor. maybe it felt like the service was absent because we were the only ones up there. although my dining companions thought that everything was slow, i found that the food arrived pretty quickly. what was slow was getting the bill, which took about 30 minutes to get and even then it was only because we decided to go down and pay. there may be a few kinks to work out in the area of service, but i hope magdala is here to stay because i am totally addicted to the food!
magdala restaurant lounge
1222, rue bishop
montréal, québec
H3G 2E3
T: 514.866.7667
payment: cash, debit, credit card
hours:
tue to sun 4:30pm-11pm
closed mondays
*** unfortunately, this restaurant is no longer open ***