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Review content:
As other reviewers have indicated, the service at this restaurant is abysmal. While our group of four was seated promptly and our orders were taken fairly quickly, that's all that was fast about the service. Seriously, we waited a good 45 minutes for the food after placing our orders (and the restaurant was not crowded). Water-refilling visits from our server were scarce. It was all I could do to get an additional plate of injera, after five minutes of having none to eat with. Taking care of the check, from start to finish, also took far too long--perhaps 20 minutes. The server was friendly enough, but that's almost beside the point, as I see it.\r
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We all ordered combination plates. I for one was momentarily mystified by the fact that the various combinations offered differ from each other in VERY slight ways--just a dish or two out of six or so--but finally we managed to select four different ensembles. Mine was a rather standard vegetarian assortment, which I normally love, but at this restaurant I found myself searching for flavor. The lentil dishes which should always be delicious were quite bland! Not only that, but they arrived at the table luke-warm, and things went downhill from there. My companions' meat dishes stayed warm longer, and they were also more flavorful.\r
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While everything was quite edible and nothing tasted truly terrible, there was also nothing outstanding about any of the food at Abyssinia. I've eaten at many Ethiopian restaurants thoughout the country, and rarely has ""bland"" been the first adjective to come to mind when describing this food, but the word certainly suits the food here. I am from out of town and left it to my local friends to select this restaurant out of Philly's selection of Ethiopian places; in other words, none of us knew any better (although we read positive-enough reviews of the food online that we weren't immediately turned off). In retrospect, I'd recommend that prospective diners check out the other local options.
Pros: selection, meat dishes
Cons: service, vegetarian dishes, overall blandness (!), parking
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