Awaze Ethio Fusion & Vegan Restaurant

Once upon a time, the best local Ethiopian meals were in Los Angeles’s Little Ethiopia at restaurants such as Lalibela. Then Beteseb opened in Anaheim with a small menu of impeccably prepared dishes, using atypically high-quality meats. If you’re willing to drive a little past Orange County into Artesia, you’ll find Awaze Ethio Fusion & Vegan Restaurant to be another impressive option with one major asset: a much larger menu.

(A second potential draw, a Friday evening all-you-can-eat buffet, was unfortunately discontinued in 2023. We wish we’d been able to see it, as we’ve never seen an Ethiopian buffet before.)

The dishes we compared between Beteseb and Awaze were all very good here, including soft Ethiopian raw steak tartar known as Kitfo, a spicy bowl of cooked, sliced beef Awaze Tibs, and Gored Gored spiced raw beef cubes. However, Awaze’s veggie combo was underappointed compared with Beteseb’s, with relatively small portions of split peas, spicy lentils, collard greens, cabbage and potatoes for the price. While Awaze’s spongy included injera bread was good, it was similarly served sparingly.