New York City / Ethiopian
Best Ethiopian
Restaurants in NYC
Fifteen rooms, three real happy hours, and combination platters from $19.75 to $28.
Three of these fifteen run a published happy hour — and only Massawa attaches a price to it.
- 15 rooms citywide
- 3 publish a happy hour
- combos $19.75–$28
- 3 fully vegan
The best Ethiopian restaurants in NYC right now are Massawa in Morningside Heights (the only Ethiopian happy hour in the city with a price on it — $8 beer, wine or cocktails, Mon–Fri 3–7pm), Ras Plant Based in Crown Heights (all-vegan, Mon–Fri 3–7pm, pouring New York-made tej), Bati in Clinton Hill (2-for-1 Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5–6:30pm), Bunna Cafe in Bushwick (the city’s only live coffee ceremony, Fri–Sun at 5pm) and Haile in the East Village ($17 kitfo, the cheapest in Manhattan). There are fifteen of these rooms in the whole city, run by about twelve operators — Awash alone has three. A combination platter runs $19.75 to $28, and the vegetarian one is always the cheaper. And this category does not do lunch: most of these kitchens do not unlock the door until 4 or 5pm.
The short version
- Best happy hourMassawa — $8 beer, wine or cocktails, Mon–Fri 3–7pm. The only one with a price on it.
- Best valueAwash Cobble Hill’s veggie combo is $24. The identical plate on Amsterdam Ave is $28.
- Cheapest kitfoHaile on Avenue B: $17 kitfo, $16 doro wot — about $8 under the uptown rate.
- Try tej hereBersi is the only room in NYC selling tej by the glass, at $12. Everyone else wants $42 for a bottle.
- Read the clockThis category does not do lunch. Awash UWS opens 2pm · Awash East Village 4:30pm · Bati 5pm.
At a glance
What a platter costs where anyone publishes a price, and which doors do not open until dinner.
| Restaurant | Order this | When | Neighborhood | $ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massawa | $8 beer, wine, cocktails | Mon–Fri 3–7pm | Morningside Heights | $$$ |
| Ras Plant Based | Happy hour, prices unpublished | Mon–Fri 3–7pm | Crown Heights | $$$ |
| Bati Ethiopian Kitchen | 2-for-1 · $8 beer | Wed–Thu 5–6:30pm | Clinton Hill | $$$ |
| Cafe Massawa | $25 vegan sampler | Daily 11:30am–10pm | Morningside Heights | $$$ |
| Awash (Upper West Side) | $28 veggie combo | Mon–Fri 2–10pm | Manhattan Valley | $$$ |
| Zoma Express | $17.59 vegan plates | Daily 5–9pm | Upper West Side | $$$ |
| Benyam Ethiopian Cuisine | Kitfo and mitmita | Tue–Sun, closed Mon | Harlem | $$$ |
| Safari Restaurant | $24 goat and rice | Daily 11am–8:40pm | Harlem | $$$ |
| Haile | $17 kitfo · $16 doro wot | Daily 5–10pm | East Village | $$$ |
| Awash (East Village) | $24–$28 combo band | Mon–Fri 4:30–9pm | East Village | $$$ |
| Meskerem Ethiopian Cuisine | $19.75 veggie combo | Hours unpublished | Greenwich Village | $$$ |
| Awash (Cobble Hill) | $24 veggie combo | Mon–Fri 4–9pm | Cobble Hill | $$$ |
| Bunna Cafe | Coffee ceremony Fri–Sun 5pm | Daily from noon | Bushwick | $$$ |
| Bersi | $12 tej by the glass | Hours unpublished | Greenpoint | $$$ |
| Makina Cafe | House-fermented injera | Tue–Sun, closed Mon | Sunnyside | $$$ |
Map: where these 15 spots are
Two clusters: Amsterdam and Broadway around 110th to 125th, and a Brooklyn line from Cobble Hill through Clinton Hill to Bushwick.
Pins are numbered to match the table above – tap any pin for the detail and directions.
The three real happy hours
Three of fifteen, and only one names a price. More in best bars in NYC.
Massawa On now
$8 for draft beer, wine or a cocktail, Monday to Friday 3 to 7pm — published on the restaurant’s own homepage, and the only Ethiopian or Eritrean happy hour in this city that names a price. It also runs at weekends, 3 to 6pm, an hour shorter. And it is the only room in the category that opens before noon on a weekday: 10:30am to 10pm Monday to Friday, 11am at weekends. The menu is Eritrean, which means the vocabulary shifts — tebsi not tibs, zigni not wat, tsebhi for the stews — so there is no doro wat and no kitfo here. The Vegan Sampler is $26 for one, $48 for two: shiro, timtimo, alitcha and tsebhi hamli. Tej and Eritrean beer are poured alongside buun, the traditional coffee. The honest caveat: $8 is the only drink price this restaurant publishes anywhere — tej is confirmed on the menu but not priced.
massawanyc.com · See our Upper West Side happy hours
Ras Plant Based On now
Three things overlap here and nowhere else in the city: fully plant-based Ethiopian cooking, a four-hour weekday happy hour, and Axum Tej — honey wine made in New York with wildflower honey and hops. The happy hour runs Monday to Friday 3–7pm, published on the venue’s own menus page, and it is a real list rather than a token one: negroni, margarita, espresso martini, well shots, rotating draft beer, red or white wine, and a spirit-free pina faux-lada for the not-drinking half of the table. Brunch runs 12–5pm on weekdays and 11am–4pm at weekends — the widest brunch window in the category. The vegan platter comes as Mercato (one person, five components) or Grand Mercato (two, nine). The honest caveat: they list what is discounted and not one price. Nobody publishes what a happy-hour negroni costs here.
rasplantbased.com · See our Crown Heights happy hours
Bati Ethiopian Kitchen On now
Two-for-one, Wednesdays and Thursdays only, ninety minutes a night — the tightest window in this whole category, with $8 Lagunitas IPA, $8 Guinness Extra Stout and $12 glasses of Garnacha or Pinot Grigio. Black-owned and women-owned, with a proper cocktail bar behind it: the Viva le Bati (Patron silver, sorrel, honey, lime) and the Merkato Rum Punch, plus tej. Tibs Tuesdays bundles Bati Rosemary, Awaze, Lega or Mushroom tibs with a tequila cocktail from 6pm. Dinner only — Tue from 6pm, Wed–Sun from 5pm, to 10pm. Two honest caveats. Their own two pages disagree about the end time — homepage says 6:30pm, happy hour page says “2 for 1 till 6pm” — so be there by 5:30 and the argument is moot. And most guides have the address wrong: it is 1057 Fulton in Clinton Hill, not 747 Fulton in Fort Greene. OpenTable and Time Out are both still on the old one.
batikitchen.com · See our Brooklyn happy hours
Uptown: Morningside Heights to 148th Street
Where the category actually lives. See Harlem happy hours.
Cafe Massawa
$25 for a Vegan Sampler for one — the cheapest full vegan platter at any sit-down Eritrean or Ethiopian restaurant in Manhattan — and it starts at 11:30am, which in this category is practically dawn. The tibs are priced flat at $24.50 whether you order beef, chicken or shrimp; salmon is $25.50. Eritrean naming throughout — tsebhi, zigni, timtimo — so, again, no doro wat and no kitfo. Two honest caveats. The restaurant’s own site says it closes at 10pm and its Toast ordering page says 9pm — call before a late arrival. And there is no alcohol here, unlike its Amsterdam Avenue sibling. Ordering through Toast adds a 2.49% card fee on top.
cafemassawa.com · See our Harlem happy hours
Awash (Upper West Side)
The Veggie Combo is $28 and includes every vegetarian dish on the menu except the tofu tibs; the Meat Combo is $48 — tibs wat, special tibs, doro wat and beg alicha, plus three vegetable dishes you pick. This is the only Awash of three that runs to 10pm every night, and the only Ethiopian restaurant in the city that publishes a named tej: Enat, $42 for a 0.75L bottle. Ethiopian beers — Meta, Walia, St. George, Bedele Special — run $7.50 to $8. Two honest caveats. Tej is bottle-only at $42, with no by-the-glass pour published, which makes it a table decision rather than a thing you try on a whim. And the kitchen does not open until 2pm on a weekday, 1:30pm at weekends. There is no lunch here.
awashny.com · See our Upper West Side happy hours
Zoma Express
The original Zoma opened in Harlem in 2005, closed in March 2020, and co-owner Henock Kejela always called that a hiatus rather than an ending. He was right: it reopened the week of 4 August 2025 on Columbus between 107th and 108th. Single vegan plates are $17.59, the Vegan Combo $27.59 for four choices. Tej goes into the cooking — both the Zoma Tibs and the Doro Tibs — but is not sold to drink. Open 5 to 9pm, seven days, closed Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. The honest caveat, and it matters: this is a takeout counter, not the 2005 dining room. Four hours a day, no alcohol, no table service. Turn up expecting the old restaurant and you will be disappointed by a perfectly good $17.59 plate.
zomaexp.com · See our best cheap eats in NYC
Benyam Ethiopian Cuisine
148th and Frederick Douglass — the northernmost Ethiopian kitchen in New York still trading, and the only one in this guide closed on Mondays. A small family-run room; the owners describe themselves on their own site simply as NYC Ethiopians cooking for the local community. The Infatuation’s Ethiopian guide points at the kitfo and the mitmita. Hours are Tue–Thu 4–9pm, Fri–Sat noon–9pm, Sun noon–8pm — it never opens before noon and it shuts at 8 on a Sunday. The honest caveat: the menu exists only as photographs on their own site, so not a single price is published anywhere in readable form. Anyone quoting Benyam prices online is quoting something they made up.
benyamcuisine.com · See our Harlem happy hours
Safari Restaurant
It calls itself the first and only Somali restaurant in New York City, and on the evidence, it is right. Owned by Mona Birjeeb and Shakib Farah, built on family recipes and sourced from Somali and Kenyan markets, on the corner of 113th and St Nicholas — a block long known as Le Petit Senegal. Hilib Ari, goat with rice, is $24; beef suqaar $20; sambusa $10.50. Beyond that it runs wider East African: chapati stew, lamb platters, biriani, pilau, mandazi. The single most useful fact about it is the clock: service runs 11am to 8:40pm, which makes it the one place in this guide you can eat East African food at lunchtime. The honest caveat: its own website has been compromised with injected spam text and is not a reliable source for anything. Use the ordering page or call (646) 964-4252.
See our best halal restaurants in NYC
Downtown Manhattan
Three rooms, all dinner-only. Pair with East Village happy hours.
Haile
Kitfo at $17 and doro wot at $16 — the lowest published prices for either dish at any open Ethiopian restaurant in Manhattan, and roughly eight dollars under what the uptown rooms charge for the same plate. Shiro wot and gomen are $13 each as individual plates; sambusas $7, lentil or beef. OpenTable bands the room at $30 and under. Dinner only, from 5pm. Two honest caveats. There is no online booking — OpenTable lists the restaurant but does not take reservations for it, so phone (212) 673-8949. And the vegetarian combo price is not published, which is odd for a kitchen that publishes everything else.
hailecuisine.com · See our East Village happy hours
Awash (East Village)
The Awash on East 6th Street between 1st and 2nd, one door off Curry Row, and the smallest window in the group: 4:30 to 9pm on a weekday — two and a half hours less than the Upper West Side room, and nothing at all before dinner. Weekends open at 1:30pm. One of three Awash locations; the others are 947 Amsterdam Ave and 242 Court St in Brooklyn. The honest caveat: the group publishes menus per location and this address is not among them. Assume the sibling band — Veggie Combo $24 to $28, Doro Wat around $25 — but confirm when you sit down, because we have already established that Awash charges different prices in different neighbourhoods.
awashny.com · See our East Village happy hours
Meskerem Ethiopian Cuisine
An eight-component vegetarian combination at $19.75 — on paper the biggest vegetarian platter in the city under twenty dollars — on the oldest Ethiopian address in Manhattan, a block off Washington Square Park. The plate lists miser, miser wat, kik wat, gommen, buticha, shro wat and two rotating vegetables. The Meskerem Combo (meat) is $19.95, doro wat $19.95, kitfo $19.45. Beer is the whole drinks list: Ethiopian, Stella or Corona, $6. The honest caveat, and it is a big one: every price here comes from a third-party delivery menu and reads like it was set years ago — a $17 tibs wat is well below the rest of the market. The restaurant’s own site is not machine-readable and no hours are published anywhere. Treat these numbers as a signal, not a quote, and ring (212) 777-8111.
ethiopianmeskeremnyc.com · See our Greenwich Village happy hours
Brooklyn and Queens
The vegan rooms, the coffee ceremony and the cheapest combo in the group. See best vegetarian restaurants.
Awash (Cobble Hill)
The Veggie Combo is $24 here and $28 at the Awash on Amsterdam Avenue — same group, same menu, four dollars apart, and nobody writes that down. If you are choosing between Awash rooms on price, Court Street wins. The Meat Combo is $50 and explicitly serves two: doro wat, gomen besiga and special tibs with collards, cabbage and split peas. Tej is a 750ml bottle at $42, Ethiopian Lager $8. It sits on the Court Street strip between Baltic and Kane. The honest caveat: this is the tightest window of the three Awash rooms — doors at 4pm on a weekday, 1pm at weekends, and the kitchen closes at 9pm seven days a week.
awashny.com · See our Cobble Hill happy hours
Bunna Cafe
The coffee ceremony runs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 5pm, published on their own site — and it is essentially the only one in New York. The whole room is built around the hearth. Entirely plant-based, no meat on the menu at all, with tej made in house and gluten-free injera alongside the standard teff. Weekdays run noon to 10pm, Friday to 11pm. Two honest caveats. The weekends split into separate services with a gap in the middle — Saturday brunch noon–4pm then dinner 5–11pm, Sunday noon–4:30pm then 5–10pm — so a 4:30pm Saturday arrival finds a closed kitchen. And Bunna publishes no prices anywhere, not on its site and not on its ordering page. You find out what the feast costs when the menu lands.
bunnaethiopia.net · See our Bushwick happy hours
Bersi
Tej is $12 a glass here — the only by-the-glass honey wine price published by any Ethiopian restaurant in New York. Eight rooms in this guide serve tej; seven of them will only sell you a $42 bottle. If you have never tried it, this is where you find out whether you like it for twelve dollars instead of forty-two. Fully vegan, and the injera is fermented and griddled fresh every morning on their own teff. The combination ladder runs from a $20 four-selection Lunch Combo up to the $65 Bersi Combo. Draft beer $8–$10, wine $10 a glass or $40 a bottle, Ethiopian coffee $3. The honest caveat, and it is a strange one: Bersi publishes prices for everything and hours for nothing — the Hours & Location page on their own site does not load. Call before you go.
bersi.nyc · See our Greenpoint happy hours
Makina Cafe
The Makina food truck opened a Sunnyside dining room in early 2026, and it makes injera on site with a ferment that runs three to five days depending on the weather. That is a level of process almost nobody in this category advertises. The menu spans both traditions — sambusas, kitfo, doro wot, doro tibs, fish tsebhi, berbere prawns, an Asmara platter — with tej and Asmara lager, and a cocktail list where The Amiche uses bourbon fat-washed with Ethiopian clarified butter. Tue–Fri 5–10pm, Sat–Sun noon–10pm. Two honest caveats. Closed Mondays, and no dining-room prices are published anywhere — the $12 bowls floating around online are the food truck’s, not the restaurant’s. Book through Resy. The Governors Island beer garden is a separate seasonal outpost, not this room.
makinacafenyc.com · See our Queens happy hours
NYC Ethiopian food: FAQ
Which Ethiopian restaurants in NYC have a happy hour?
Three of the fifteen. Massawa at 1239 Amsterdam Avenue runs Monday to Friday 3-7pm and Saturday to Sunday 3-6pm at $8 for draft beer, wine or a cocktail – the only Ethiopian happy hour in the city with a price attached to it. Ras Plant Based in Crown Heights runs Monday to Friday 3-7pm across cocktails, well shots, rotating draft beer, wine and a spirit-free option, but publishes no prices. Bati Ethiopian Kitchen in Clinton Hill runs 2-for-1 on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 5pm, with $8 Lagunitas IPA, $8 Guinness Extra Stout and $12 glasses of Garnacha or Pinot Grigio.
How much does an Ethiopian combination platter cost in NYC?
Between $19.75 and $28 for a vegetarian or vegan combination, and the vegetarian plate is always cheaper than the meat one. Verified: Meskerem $19.75 (from a stale-looking delivery menu, so treat it with suspicion), Bersi’s four-selection Lunch Combo $20, Awash Cobble Hill $24, Cafe Massawa $25, Massawa’s Vegan Sampler $26, Awash Upper West Side $28 and Ras Plant Based’s Mercato. Meat combos run higher: $48 at Awash Upper West Side and $50 at Awash Cobble Hill, both of which serve two. The strangest fact in the category is that Awash charges $24 for its Veggie Combo in Cobble Hill and $28 for the identical plate on Amsterdam Avenue.
Where can you drink tej in NYC?
Eight of the fifteen serve it: Massawa, both Awash locations that publish a drinks list, Bunna Cafe, Ras Plant Based, Bersi, Bati and Makina Cafe. But only one publishes a by-the-glass price. Bersi in Greenpoint sells tej at $12 a glass; everywhere else that prices it wants $42 for a 750ml bottle, and Awash Upper West Side is the only room in the city that names the tej it pours – Enat. Ras Plant Based pours Axum Tej, which is made in New York with wildflower honey and hops, and Bunna makes its own in house. Zoma Express cooks with tej but does not sell it to drink.
What time do Ethiopian restaurants in NYC open?
Later than you think – this is a category that mostly does not do lunch. Awash Upper West Side opens at 2pm on a weekday, Awash Cobble Hill at 4pm, Awash East Village at 4:30pm, Benyam at 4pm, and Bati, Makina, Haile and Zoma Express all at 5pm. Only three open before noon: Massawa at 10:30am on weekdays, Cafe Massawa at 11:30am daily, and Safari, the city’s Somali restaurant in Harlem, from 11am. Benyam and Makina are both closed on Mondays.
Which NYC Ethiopian restaurants are fully vegan?
Three, and they are the strongest vegan rooms in the category. Bunna Cafe in Bushwick has no meat menu at all, makes its own tej, offers gluten-free injera and runs the city’s only live coffee ceremony on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 5pm. Ras Plant Based in Crown Heights is entirely plant-based, runs a Monday-to-Friday 3-7pm happy hour and pours New York-made Axum tej. Bersi in Greenpoint is vegan, ferments and griddles its injera fresh every morning, and is the only Ethiopian restaurant in the city selling tej by the glass at $12. Of the three, only Bersi publishes prices.
Last updated: August 2026. Prices and hours change – confirm with the venue before you go. Spot something out of date? Let us know.
