UPDATE: Nile Vegan has closed its campus-area location. Find it on Goodale Boulevard!
Look, I never want to waste an opportunity to praise good Ethiopian food. We’ve documented our love of Addis Restaurant and Lalibela in Columbus, and Little Africa in my hometown of Grand Rapids is perhaps our favorite restaurant of all time.
So I have to take the opportunity to highlight our couple visits to Nile Vegan over the past months. Nile Vegan is a relatively new Ethiopian spot with two locations, the first down a side street just south of Ohio State’s campus (pictured above) and the second along Goodale Boulevard in Grandview (below).
The Grandview location is a little larger, with a size-able dining room and full bar.
The campus spot is a smaller, with a collection of booths along the wall; it was only open for carryout when we visited last summer.
Ethiopian food is best shared as a group around the table, but it translates fairly well to carryout as well. It’s served on a bed of injera, a spongy and lightly sour flatbread that’s a staple of the cuisine. Typically you tear off pieces of the bread and scoop up bites of the various stews. For carryout, expect the veggies to soak into the injera a bit, but that’s not a bad thing.
For dine-in, they’ll serve everything on platters, with rolls of injera on the side (and we always end up ordering extra).
Nile Vegan’s menu is pretty detailed, and they explain each dish. We can’t say we’ve had a bad thing there. As you can guess from the name, everything is plant-based here. But honestly, much of our favorite Ethiopian dishes are veggie-centric already, so if you love this type of food, you’ll be happy here.
Our preference is to order large platters with a little bit of everything. Most of the dishes are hearty stews based on lentils, mushrooms, split peas, cabbage, potatoes, chickpeas, kale, tofu, beets, tomatoes. All wonderfully rich and colorful.
I’m a big believer in food bringing people together, and Ethiopian fare, shared over a common platter while you eat with your hands, is one of the best vehicles for it. So as things re-open and we reconnect with friends and family face-to-face, consider a visit to a spot like Nile Vegan!
Nile Vegan
1479 Worthington St. (campus)
1223 Goodale Blvd. (Grandview)
nilevegan.com
Find them on Facebook and @nilevegan on Instagram
They offer carryout through their website, or delivery through Uber Eats, DoorDash, Postmates, and Grubhub
