At least we’ve had good food so far: we dropped Graem off at Uncle Dennis’ for some quality time, and had lunch at Meskerem (Ethiopian!) in the West Village. It was pretty good–not the best, but a good fix for us Upstaters with no ethnic food options–we had a beef and collard green dish, the requisite doro wat, yegeb alicha, and a vegetable combo. Shawna really liked the doro wat, but it was a little more sour than I like it. The lamb in the yegeb alicha was mostly fatty bony pieces, but tasted pretty good. I thought the veggies were more well-done: all the lentil dishes were spiced well and garlicky, and one had chopped fresh green pepper that added good crunch to an otherwise pureed meal. The tej tasted kind of like cough syrup.

A bit tipsy after the honey wine, Shawna and I walked it off and checked out all the restaurants we didn’t eat at. We also checked out some crass t-shirt shops, and wondered why every other store sold bongs water pipes. We had some Ben & Jerry’s, and then headed back to pick up a sleeping Graem. On the way back to the subway, Grammy started to wake up, so we had to find her some food. We stopped at Papaya Dog at West 4th, and picked up a special (2 dogs and a drink). Grammy had the plain dog, and Shawna and I split one with onion sauce. Yes, this was just after gorging on Ethiopian food! We chased it all down with papaya juice, which tasted more doped up than Gray’s or Papaya King’s.