I've been to many Eritrean restaurants in many parts of the world. Adulis in London, UK, is by far the best classiest Eritrean restaurant of them all. Great authentic Eritrean cuisine served in elegant style with the best Eritrean hospitality. To dine at Adulis is beyond culinary delight; it is a cultural experience par excellence.
Had a very nice evening out at Adulis. The food was excellent, the portions plentiful and the injera had the right consistency and "sourdough" flavour. We shared the mixed platter and all of the dishes were delicious. The dry honey wine was also very good. We also did the "coffee ceremony" which was fun. :-) The waitstaff were attentive and patient. Would dine here again -- hopefully soon. :-)
It was my first time having Eritrean food and I'm so impressed! The food was delicious, a good balance of spicy and not spicy, the place very comfy and the staff really good, what a positive experience!
Adulis Restaurant is my favourite when it comes to East Africa food. The variety of vegetarian is great. The place is immaculate and the staff are friend. The service is on point. Yum yum yum.
I must say Adulis is by far the best Eritrean Restaurant in London. Lovely food, amazing atmosphere and great service!
The food was delicious. It was my first time trying Eritrean food and the experience was great.
Amazing food served last night, thoroughly enjoyed and recommend.
I've been here many times and the food is superb. I recently celebrated my 50th birthday at Adulis and it was a wonderful evening. The staff were great - really helpful & friendly - and they even played Stevie Wonder's 'Happy Birthday to you'. Thanks guys for a fabulous 50th birthday celebration. I'll be back soon!
Ive been to Adulis in Brixton twice now, and both times the food was amazing. vegetarian and vegan options are beautiful. The decor, the mood, the food, the vibe, the staff and especially the house wine are all reasons to return. cant wait to go back and stuff my face lol
super restaurant avec une proprietaire vraiment tres gentille et super commercante, on a voyagé en afrique autour d'un super plateau ....il faut pas hésiter à rentrer et essayer....
Nice atmosphere, traditional interiors, tasty food, kind staff and good location.
Very happy about it
So fresh. So helpful so vibrant. It would be easy to run out of superlatives about this little nugget. Wow. Wanna come back. Again. And again. And again. Etc ad libitum ad neaseum.
First time eating this cuisine, really enjoyed it 👍🏻
My favourite restaurant EVER food is delicious, staff is Great and atmosphere is wonderful!!! Definitely the place to be and to eat
We had a very very late dinner one Friday night in early April whilst visiting London for the weekend. The food is amazing. The atmosphere is cheery and relaxed. The staff are great! I have told friends if they are nearby to go eat there.
Loved everything about this place! Food, service and atmosphere was on point! Don't leave without trying the coffee ceremony. The ceremony involves the roasting of coffee which is then freshly brewed and comes with popcorn and incense.
Fantastic finger food experience in this African restaurant. It's a great experience with this part of the Eritrean culture. The food is really good and transports us to the Eritrean way of life. I totally recommend it to all that are willing to try new things, new combinations of food! It's also great for groups of friend. Spreading the word!
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I experienced Eritrean cuisine for the first time when I went to Adulis for dinner with friends. A friend, who had been here before, recommended the platters. It's a platter yes, but for a pride of lions!
We were 8 of us - 2 vegetarians and the rest meat eaters. We ordered a vegetarian platter for 2, a meat platter for 4 and a meat platter for 2. Adulis customizes platters if you have particular preferences (no beef, more chicken and so on). As I am not too fond of red meat, the husband graciously offered to allow our platter to have more chicken. Some platters come with vegetarian portions as well and all platters have rolls of Injera (fermented pancake-like rolls). Surprisingly, I enjoyed the vegetarian dishes more; especially the lentils - awesomesauce and lip smacking!
Some of the meat dishes look scarily hot, but they are quite mild.
The ambience is rustic and cozy. Nice place for a casual date or for a reasonable meal of gigantic portions! One thing to keep in mind - they are a cash only restaurant. Make sure you are carrying enough money if you don't want to jog down to the ATM after your meal (the nearest one charges 1.85 pounds for cash withdrawal).
Adulis, or 'little Eritrea' as they call it served us up an enjoyable Easter lunch. We loved the unique decor of the interior of the restaurant and the presentation of our food. We opted for the 'mini kirchat' and were not disappointed! Large portions and enough variety to satisfy carnivores and vegetarians alike. We were sad not to have tasted the shiro (dishes in platter are selected by head chef) but loved all the other classics including the phenomenal misir wot and tibs! Although we missed out on the tap water we ordered at the start and staff were not always as attentive as we would have liked, we would definitely visit Adulis again. Great taste and value for money.
Something different but not too impressed. Expectations were possibly too high, after reading about Adulis on several on-line blogs. In order to savor as many dishes as possible, we picked the 25 pounds mixed meat and veggie platter.
As per emblematic Eritrean ritual, all food was served on injera, a sour flatbread with a unique spongy texture to be used to scoop meat or vegetables to your mouth.
Not sure about the freshness, dishes obviously aren't cooked to order, but everything was deliciously tingly and well spiced. On the other hand, having so much stuff on the table, once getting cold the injera became soggier and the mean didn't taste as tender.
A mention must go to the lovely inner decor and to the Adulis honey wine which suits the meal very well.
Overall, we enjoyed the experience but definitely would not rush to go back.
Eritrean delights washed down with mead. Scrumptious Eritrean food. It takes a time to come but worth it, absolutely delicious
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Certainly one of the best things about London is that you can easily find any kind of food. I decided on Saturday night to try a restaurant in my new local area. There is not many proper restaurants is the area compared to Smithfield-Clerkenwell. In Oval it is mainly chicken fast food shops and kebabs. If you want more choice of course you can always go down to Brixton or Clapham, but for a Halloween hangover reason we wanted to stay local. One of the proper restaurants is Adulis who have served Eritrean cuisine since 1996. It sounded like the perfect option for my friends and I, as two of them were vegetarian and Eritrean is veggie friendly. I didn't think we really needed to book for a Saturday night in Oval, but we did in case. We arrived to Adulis and we were all very surprised to find the place packed. We ordered some drinks and we shared a starter while we were waiting for the main to arrive. All of us noticed the nice little smell of roasted coffee in the restaurant, it was really pleasant. We had humous to start, it was served with pitta bread. It was a really nice and smooth humous. At that time of the meal, we didn't know we did a mistake by ordering a starter and eating bread. Chickpeas and sesame paste served with pita bread My two vegetarian friends already tried Eritrean food in Africa, for my other friend and I, it was a new experience. We shared the mini kirchat for two people, and our veggie friends shared the Nai tsom for two people. The food arrived on two massive platters and were served with Injera underneath and on the side too. Injera (also called Tatia) is leavened pancake made with sourdough of taff flour. Mini kirchat, a selection of four different vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes I liked the fact that you didn't have a knife or fork in Adulis, you had to eat with your hand and your piece of pancake. There was such a lot of food on this platter, I only regret the waiter didn't tell us what was each dish on the platter.
On a freezing cold evening in early December we slipped and slid and skated our way through unlovely Kennington streets in search of a meal. I used to live round here, and for better or worse it hasn't changed much in five years - the Fentiman Arms is sti
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Adulis is a full sensory experience! Though London has a plethora of ethnic cuisine options, it is rare to find Eritrean dining so stumbling upon Adulis was both an adventure and a treat.
The Décor of the restaurant features many items from Eritrea and plays with natural textures (exposed wood, lamb skin bench in the corner, woven pillows) against regular restaurant fare. It is very bright and feels fun and not over the top. Music is fun, though a bit non-genre specific... We heard African tribal music and then the blues?
I was not familiar with Eritrean cuisine so I was glad that our waitress came over and explained the cuisine a bit and recommended (there goes my dry January) the Mies Wine, which is a white wine infused with honey. It was actually pretty good and not as sweet as the name suggests.
We ordered the shared 'chefs choice' platter since I really had no clue what anything was. The dish that came out was a huge circular platter with pancake-like wraps (it is not doughy, a bit sour and surprisingly tasty) with 8 different curry/stew things to share. Unfortunately, I have no idea what anything was called but we had 2 different chicken things, 1 beef, 1 lamb (I think), a bean dish, spinach and some thing with an egg. I may not know what I ate but it was soo good.
How to eat: So, this was surprising to me but there was no individual plates and no utensils...so you use the pancake thing to scoop up bits of what you want and eat directly from the platter. Very fun, very messy! ask for extra napkins before you begin.
My recommendation is ONLY GO WITH YOUR MOST HYGIENIC FRIENDS! Chances are you will be sharing dishes and based on the lack of utensils, you will be pushing around food with hands. Fortunately, my pal had been before and brought hand sanitizer for us before the meal.
In terms of service, the staff is really nice but also super understaffed. When we first arrived we were the only people...then within 30 minutes it was packed! And only one waitress!! So be ready to hang out for awhile.
Super cool place, amazing food and a true full sensory experience!
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Certainly one of the best things about London is that you can easily find any kind of food.
I decided on Saturday night to try a restaurant in my new local area. There is not many proper restaurants is the area compared to Smithfield-Clerkenwell. In Oval it is mainly chicken fast food shops and kebabs. If you want more choice of course you can always go down to Brixton or Clapham, but for a Halloween hangover reason we wanted to stay local.
One of the proper restaurants is Adulis who have served Eritrean cuisine since 1996.
It sounded like the perfect option for my friends and I, as two of them were vegetarian and Eritrean is veggie friendly.
I didn't think we really needed to book for a Saturday night in Oval, but we did in case.
We arrived to Adulis and we were all very surprised to find the place packed.
We ordered some drinks and we shared a starter while we were waiting for the main to arrive. All of us noticed the nice little smell of roasted coffee in the restaurant, it was really pleasant.
We had humous to start, it was served with pitta bread. It was a really nice and smooth humous. At that time of the meal, we didn't know we did a mistake by ordering a starter and eating bread.
My two vegetarian friends already tried Eritrean food in Africa, for my other friend and I, it was a new experience. We shared the mini kirchat for two people, and our veggie friends shared the Nai tsom for two people.
The food arrived on two massive platters and were served with Injera underneath and on the side too. Injera (also called Tatia) is leavened pancake made with sourdough of taff flour.
I liked the fact that you didn't have a knife or fork in Adulis, you had to eat with your hand and your piece of pancake. There was such a lot of food on this platter, I only regret the waiter didn't tell us what was each dish on the platter.
We had a mix of vegetarian and non vegetarian dishes. We had beef, lamb and chicken on the platter, every meat were cooked with the perfect balance of spice in a different way. Each dish was very good but our favourite was the lamb served in the middle. All the vegetarian option were also very good and tasty. The best one was the shimbra assa: chickpeas cooked in spices, garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper and olive oil.
Overall the meal was a delight, vegetarian dishes were as good as meat dishes. I would probably take the vegetarian next time as it is more healthy. We were all very full and couldn't finish the platter, next time we won't order any starter as the injera with all different meat and vegetables was enough, especially if you had a brunch and a snack before on the same day.
We didn't go for the coffee ceremony at the end as we were too tired, but it is definitely on our future plan for our next visit, the roasted coffee smell was very attractive and tempting.
7/10.
Adulis makes for a brilliant initiation to Ethiopian/Eritrean cuisine! Its a fair-sized place with slightly kitschy but perfectly pleasant homeland inspired decor. The staff can help you navigate the rather exotic menu, but make sure you have the Ater Wot! All the gravies are well prepared and the Injiras seem perfect enough to the outsider. I'd really recommend their wines - the Ethiopian honey wine is rather good and makes for a nice departure from the usual.
Good vegetarian mesob but a little more expensive than other Ethiopian & Eritrean restaurants and a tad too spicy for my taste.
Amazing food! Visited here as a group of 6 vegans and we loved it! A great vegan menu and we got a vegan combo for 4 between 4 of us (works out £15pp) and 2 shared hummus and plate for 1.
Every 'curry' tasted delicious and was different from each other. The injera (bread) was lovely and we had free top ups when needed. Great service!
For drinks they did not have plantbased milks for coffee so we ordered spiced tea and juice. No vegan desserts but staff said they were working on it.
Location is very near Oval station. We went on a Monday night so it was quiet on arrival but still got busy after. I recommend to reserve your table at this popular restaurant!
Delicious foods, tasty african coffee with nice atmosphere and friendly staff:) Briliant:) I highly recommend to visit for everyone:)
Excellent and authentic food! We loved the decor and the friendly staff.
I really enjoyed this food. Everything was tasty and this Ethiopian bread is very unique. Be warned that the spice level is quite high. I hadn't eaten spicy in a while and some of the food was a bit too hot for me.
Absolutely splendid food. I have been desperate to find somewhere for authentic Eritrean and Ethiopian flavours, and Adulis really delivered. I thoroughly recommend getting one of the mixed platters so you get a taste of everything.
Elias Mulugeta Hordofa
+5
One of the best Eritrean/Ethiopian restaurants!
Wherever I go around the world, as an Ethiopian I am always dissapointed with the location choice, cleanliness, and presentation - more over with the food of many Ethio-Eritrean establishments.
But Adulis was different - it was well managed, and organized professionaly.
We really enjoyed our experience at Adulis - Yeqeniley!
Visited this spot over the weekend and booked a table for 6pm. We were seated quickly and though it was not busy at the time, the atmosphere was still great. The interior is stunning, the food was generous in terms of the portion size. The price point was truly fair for the quality received. The flavours were there and all dishes were well seasoned. Nothing was overly seasoned or under. The staff were beyond exceptional and all in all, it was a truly memorable experience. I cannot recommend enough and will certainly return!
First time experiencing Eritrean food, but it seemed to be similar to Ethiopian food I’ve had and I was highly pleased! The price was fantastic and came to less than £20 for a starter and main and tea, staff were attentive and happy to advise on what to have, food came quickly, was presented really well and each item has different flavours and textures, it was highly enjoyable and left feeling stuffed!! The tea made me incredibly sleepy. Would be happy to go back.
Not sure if the injera is made fresh because it’s identical to other places I’ve eaten.
Lovely decor and great atmosphere - first time trying Eritrean food and was a great experience! Went on a Sunday afternoon so was a bit quiet and so was harder to find someone to take our order but after that was pretty smooth sailing.
Great food very very tasty and a lot of nice vegan options.
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TLDR; An excellent place to try out Eritean food at a very reasonable price. It is worth a visit even if the menu is a little confusing.
This was my first time trying Eritrean food and it did not disappoint. Food is served on a giant platter designed for sharing. This mean you get a good variety and is almost like a tasting menu.
We had meat option for a meal for 4. It included 8 different dishes all served on a giant platter. This was accompanied by baskets of pancakes which is used to pick up and wrap the food from the sharing plate.
The slow cooked lamb and shrimps were particularly delicious. Generally, all 8 dishes had strong flavours which goes perfectly well with the pancakes.
Atmosphere wise, a lot of effort has gone into the decor. It is full of character and unique for sure. Holes in the wall are used as shelves, carving of messages in Eritrean on the walls, etc all adds to the vibe. Some times this felt a bit too much and almost feel like a theme park restaurant at times.
The price is very reasonable and offers good value. The menu was long and can be a bit confusing so make sure you give it a good read before ordering.
We averaged £30 per person with drinks and dessert. It was a lot of food too and we should probably have ordered less.
Adults Restaurant I have been going ti the restaurant since I was young age.
This restaurant is one of the best , clean with an excellent staff, good food lovely atmosphere, good volume of music background restaurant.
I would suggest you to go and enjoy your meal 😋 good job Adulis keep it up.
Amazing food!! We ordered the meat/veg mini combo for two and honey wine and we were absolutely stuffed!! I also couldn't pick a favorite dish from the assortment if you asked me as they all were tasty!
First thing first, it is just 5 minutes from oval tube station. East African restaurant, the Ambiance is quite vintage and very pleasant. The food is authentic, though I tried it for first time(ordered vegan). You find find good wine here.
Good for couples and family both.
Service is good. A little costly but value exceeds cost.
Nice Ethiopian/ Eritrean dishes, we tried the sharing platters. Cozy restaurant, good service. The coffee ceremony (see photo of lady roasting coffee beans) seemed interesting to watch - and smell!
Beautiful decor with many traditional items. Very clean Restaurant and bathrooms. The staff were very friendly with good service. The traditional tea is very refreshing which I had before my meal. The meal was delicious and the of my family enjoyed their meal too.
A Great Restaurant and Beautiful atmosphere where we stayed up to 5 hours eating and having a wonderful time catching up with one another.
Highly recommended - it caters for Vegan too!!!
Great Eritrean restaurant, we loved the vegan selection and portions were (deceptively) very big! Particularly enjoyed the cabbage dish, shiro and spicy lentils. Would definitely return.
Ate here once the food was nice, it was my first time trying Eritrean food, I have had it many times since so I do recommend. I had the injera (not sure how to spell it) with a selection of meats, and egg really nice sharing plate.
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