Makina Cafe

Eden Gebre Egziabher started Makina as a food truck in 2017, cooking the Eritrean and Ethiopian food of her family, and after years of lines on the street and summers on Governors Island she finally opened a proper restaurant on Skillman Avenue. The room is warm and lovely, and the cooking has the confidence of someone who has spent a decade perfecting a short list of things.

Eritrean cooking shares injera and berbere with its Ethiopian neighbor, but carries traces of the Red Sea and of Italian Asmara. Order the Asmara platter, sambusas, and the doro wat, the chef's signature, which takes two days to make. Koseret tibs and kitfo are here for meat-lovers, and the cocktail list includes a bourbon washed with spiced Ethiopian butter.