Our server at Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen had dropped off a dessert menu, though I was planning to skip the sweets. Two of us had torn through a table-size platter — an Ethiopian vegetable combo spread around the perimeter, with lamb and chicken stews piled into the center — consuming roll after roll of injera we unspooled for scooping.
Then Yvette Platoff walked by. Her gaze felt like a warm hand on my shoulder.
“You should try our ice cream,” she said. “We make our own. We serve two scoops, one spiced with berbere and the other with cardamom, that we like to call ‘fire and ice.’ It’s very light.”
There would be dessert after all.
An Ethiopian restaurant like no other in L.A.
Los Angeles has plenty of examples of ice creams infused with flavors from cultures across the globe. The Platoffs’ berbere riff is a great contribution. Recipes for the spice blend vary by hands and tastes, but some essentials are consistent: dried and ground chiles of medium heat, ginger, fenugreek and a mix of sweeter spices. This one, steeped in milk and cream, sparks off the roof of your mouth with a gentle chile burn and the pleasantly numbing zap of cloves. The texture leans icy, a fun contrast and a natural bridge to the smoother, mellower cardamom counterpoint alongside.
I am admittedly late to joys like these at Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen, which opened three years ago in an Eagle Rock strip mall, but I’ve become a fast fan in the last couple of months.
More Ethiopian restaurants in general would be welcome in L.A. It’s always rewarding to travel to the Little Ethiopia district on South Fairfax Avenue — for a weekend meal at Meals by Genet (especially Genet Agonafer’s doro wat, with its intricately concentrated sauce), and the “veggie utopia” with “special kitfo” (beef tartare glossed in butter infused with cardamom-forward mitmita) at Tenagne Belachew’s Lalibela.
In their own orbit 16 miles northeast, the Platoffs move more freely between tradition and creative expression.
The vegan combo platter with rib-eye tibs at Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen in Eagle Rock
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The savory cooking stays largely anchored in the canon. Vegetable combo platters are standard on Ethiopian menus; theirs, entirely vegan, shows strongest in dishes with forward seasonings like misir wat (berbere-stained lentils, a preview to the ice cream finale) and kik alicha (long-simmered yellow split peas, their color intensified with turmeric). You can complete a meat-free meal with cubed tibs (a common sauté of chicken or beef, also available) reimagined with rosemary-scented tofu.
Moving up the food chain: The whole trout is fried with particular care so the skin crackles and the filet underneath can be tugged away easily. Among several sauces on the side, home in on senafich, a classic, sinus-sizzling Ethiopian condiment fashioned from mustard seeds.
Servers will relay several daily specials. I listen out for ye beg alicha wot, lamb shoulder stewed in gingery gravy. Serrano and garlic give some twitch to the otherwise mild flavors; I like the way this meatier option melds with vegetables like gomen (oniony greens, in which case kale).
Kitfo — Ethiopia’s beef tartare in spiced butter — with sides of fresh cheese and gomen (braised greens) at Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Look around the room and everyone has some version of an injera-blanketed platter in front of them — many with doro wat (the aromatic sauce enveloping chicken and eggs that’s a little sweeter than Agonafer’s masterwork) or mounds of diced beef tenderloin or brisket beside tangles of cabbage and onion or cool, crunchy salads.
The sensibility of the owners helps set the restaurant apart. Colors and textures saturate the space: lacquered tree trunks as tables, blue-green tiles, gold pendant lights, big prints of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s portraits of African women. It’s also tiny, so it’s wise to reserve seats at dinner or weekend-only lunch.
Russell tends to stay in the kitchen while Yvette circulates through the room. She cultivates an exceptional ethos of hospitality in the front-of-house staff. Meals start with a server ritualistically washing your hands with rose water. Rather than drop off baskets full of injera, as many places do, the team circulates through the room delivering fresh injera just as you’ve polished off your last round. I wasn’t surprised that the table next to me last week were regulars celebrating a birthday. You come here to feel taken care of.
Dining room near the entrance of Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen.
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
And to eat dessert. There’s a dense-rather-than-wobbly take on Basque cheesecake, crowned with the kind of smoky caramel sauce you’d find atop sticky toffee pudding. Homemade ice cream appears most sculpturally in a banana split scattered with salted pistachios and hazelnuts and glossed with chocolate sauce cleverly laced with Ethiopian coffee.
I love that fun finales receive this much consideration. Since the two scoops of “fire and ice” are recurrent specials not listed among the selections, I’m especially glad that Yvette rightly sized me up as someone who’d appreciate how the berbere almost sizzles through the frosty sweetness, ringing on the palate and even longer in your memory.
Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen: 1743 Colorado Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 274-4476, instagram.com/auntyvetteskitchen
Food Bowl and 101 Best Restaurants events are two weeks away!
The annual guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, written by fellow restaurant critic Jenn Harris and me, is moving from its longtime publication date in December to this month: The big reveal will happen online on Friday, Oct. 23. Print subscribers will receive their copy with their newspaper on Sunday, Oct. 25.
The 101 is joining Food Bowl for a weekend-long celebration. The 101 event is on Friday, Oct. 23, at 7 p.m. at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica. Among the chefs who will be serving at the event: Gilberto Cetina of Holbox, Keith Corbin of Alta Adams, Brian Dunsmoor of Dunsmoor, Jon Yao of Kato, Fátima Juárez of Komal, Alexis Brown of Henrietta and Dave Beran of Pasjoli. Get tickets here for the whole weekend’s events.
Gilberto Cetina of Holbox will be among the chefs at this year’s 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles event.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
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