First-timers at Queen of Sheba all stall out at the same spot on the menu. They get through the doro wot fine. The tibs, no problem. Then they hit the spaghetti and look up, confused, because there is a full Italian section at this Ethiopian restaurant in Addison, and somebody at the table always says the same thing. Oh, that must be for people who won’t try the real food.
No. The spaghetti is the real food.
Italy colonized Eritrea for fifty years and occupied Ethiopia in the late 1930s. The soldiers eventually left. The pasta never did. Walk into a cafe in Addis Ababa or Asmara today and spaghetti sits on the menu next to injera, because after ninety years it belongs there. So when Queen of Sheba serves a bolognese made with Ethiopian ground beef slow-cooked with Italian herbs, or a spaghetti marinara with meatballs for the kids, that isn’t a hedge. That’s the food these families actually grew up eating, both halves of it.
Berhane and Elsa Kiflom opened Queen of Sheba in March 1991 at McKinney and Lemmon, when Ethiopian food in Dallas still required a tutorial with every order. No forks. Tear the injera, pinch the stew, repeat. They taught this city one table at a time for over a decade, and then Uptown rents did what Uptown rents do.
The restaurant closed around 2003. For three years there was no Queen of Sheba in Dallas, and the people who loved it did not shut up about it. Then it came back, in a strip center on Inwood just south of Belt Line, and it has been there ever since. The restaurant turns thirty-five this year with the same two people running it, which in Dallas restaurant time is roughly geologic.
Start with the doro wot, the national dish of Ethiopia — chicken slow-stewed in berbere, the deep red spice blend that runs through this whole kitchen, with a hard-boiled egg in the stew. It comes with plenty of injera, the soft, tangy sourdough flatbread you tear off and use to scoop everything up, served in hand-woven baskets from Ethiopia. From there the menu opens wide.
Zil zil tibs are long strips of beef sautéed with onions and peppers. Yebeg tibs are the lamb version, and a lot of regulars will tell you the lamb is where this kitchen shines. Doro tibs handles the chicken side.
The kitfo is finely minced beef warmed in spiced butter, traditionally served rare, and after thirty-five years this is a kitchen you can trust with it. For the table, get the sambusas — crisp fried pastries filled with spiced beef and lentils — and the himbasha, a soft, lightly sweet Ethiopian bread brushed with roasted garlic butter. There’s even a mahi-mahi done the Queen’s way, pan-seared with cardamom, black pepper, and roasted garlic with a touch of berbere, for anyone who wants the flavors without the heat.
The vegan menu is one of the deepest in Dallas, and it isn’t an afterthought — fasting days in the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar mean this cuisine has been cooking seriously without meat for centuries. The vegan combination is the way in: spicy missir wot red lentils, mild turmeric missir alecha, shiro made from ground chickpeas, garlicky gomen greens, and yatakelt alecha, a gentle stew of cabbage, potatoes, and carrots, all arranged around the injera.
Beyond the combination there’s berbere-spiced tofu, braised shiitake tibs, fire-roasted eggplant sautéed with garlic and cardamom, and vegan mushroom sambusas. There’s also an Ethiopian fried chicken with black garlic aioli on the other side of the menu, a newer dish that shows the kitchen still likes to play. Finish with bunna, traditional Ethiopian coffee, or shahi, the spiced tea. Neither is meant to be rushed.
Queen of Sheba is at 14875 Inwood Road in Addison. Call 972-239-3290 or visit thequeensheba.com.
Thirty-five years in, the Kifloms are still greeting people like family, still explaining injera to first-timers, still serving spaghetti next to doro wot. Some diners will never ask why both are there. The ones who do get a history lesson with dinner.
