Selam Restaurant

I had my first experience here and the food was amazing! Lets start with the hospitality. Mr. Haile (the owner) was very welcoming. Beth, was very informative regarding their culture and her hospitality service was absolutely amazing as well. This is my new go to spot every time I visit from New York. Millen, your great and I’ll see you soon.
Angelo.

I had the opportunity to eat at Selam restaurant the food was great and the hospitality was given in the spirit of excellence. Mr. Haile the chef prepares the food from scratch per ordering. I am not a spinach lover but once you had a taste of Beth Spinach you would want to eat more. The food portions are more than enough. I enjoyed the custom of family style eating which is so rewarding. The food pricing could never add up to the services that is surrendered. The place is clean and well kept and very welcoming. If ever in DC again I will be sure to stop by and visit My new Eritrean Family!!!

Love this place! I’ve been a couple of times and its never disappointed. Kind of has a hole-​in-​the-​wall feel.
I’ve always just asked for a large platter with different meats & veggies. Great to share, from a group of 2 to a larger group. Not sure its actually on the menu, but they’ve always brought out something great (usually with two or three meats – beef, lamb, chicken all good!).
Service has always been friendly and I’ve always enjoyed spending times over a dinner here. Would definitely recommend!

Three friends and I ended up here last night after the wait at Keren looked centuries long. We were pleasantly surprised – there isn’t much to the place, a couple of square tables scattered around a smallish dining room, lined on one side by a bar. The food was out of this world, and the waiters were incredibly friendly and helpful. Between the four of us, we shared the hamil tibbs (beef with spinach in a red pepper sauce), alicha (potatoes and cabbage), and shiro (spicy lentils), all served with delicious spongy injera. They also brought us a salad to start which, while nothing terribly special, was a pleasant surprise and tasted fresh. Not only completely delicious, the meal was also ridiculously well-​priced. Should you find yourself on U Street, I would definitely recommend Selam!

I’ve been coming here regularly for a decade and I’ve never had a bad meal. It’s my go to place to take guests. Family run, incredible hospitality, great prices, and more than generous portions. I hesitate to write this review because I’ve always been able to get a table and I don’t want it get too crowded!
Here’s a tip: skip the menu and ask what they recommend that day. They’ll ask you what level of spice you like and you will be treated to a mouth-​watering feast made from the day’s freshest ingredients. The food and hospitality will keep you coming back.

We stumbled upon this gem before seeing a show at 9:30 club a few years ago and have gone here every chance we get since then! The food is incredible and the family who owns the place treats you like family, too! They always make us exactly what we want — regardless of menu options and we always leave happy and full! After having tried other Ethiopian restaurants with even higher Unilocal reviews, we are even more sure that Selam is the best in DC metro area! Don’t bother with other places!

Authentic, warm food. The right amount of spicy and really the right amount of food. Fresh, soft injera. Got pretty busy really fast but the service was friendly. I would definitely recommend. Doro Wot, gored gored, and split peas. Awesome meal.

3.5 stars
Selam is an Ethiopian restaurant on U Street. There are only a few tables, and a small bar. We were greeted immediately by the staff– they were very friendly and made sure we were taken care of.
I came here with two friends and we shared a veggie platter, which is a combination of whatever they have that’s cooked in the kitchen. They also quickly cooked up a spicy sauce that they put in the middle. They gave us four dishes (separated into two mounds) on our big injera plate: spinach, lentils, potato dish, and a tomato salad.
The food is OK, but the service is fantastic. They treat you like family, and one of the chefs gave me a big hug when I was leaving!

I was referred to this eatery by a friend. I absolutely loved everything about it, from the ambiance, to the owners, the food and drinks! I had the veggie combo plate. It was soooo good!!! I asked the bartender (I believe she said her name is Beth) to just make w a drink, and it was superb!!! When I come back to visit I definitely will be back at Selam!!!

This is my go-​to place for casual ethiopian/​eritrean food in DC. It’s a bit of a dive bar, the ambience is not in any way fancy, but the food is cooked to order and is AMAZING. They also are happy to customize the size and variety of a platter for you.
Our go-​to is the chicken tibs/​veggie platter combo for two. Great variety, lots of food, and they’ll bring out a little extra of this or that if you want more of a particular thing. The food is nearly always stellar, very affordable, and the service is like hanging out with friends who just want you to have the best time possible.
This is a family-​run place– with the dad cooking cooking in the back and the daughter serving up front. Customers often chime in if you need service on when one of them will be back. If you go more than once a month, they remember you.
This is not fast food– come here when you want to hang with someone for at least an hour and chat.

This place was amazing! Great food and great service. They put the family back in family-​style. Will definitely return!

The food came out very slow. We probably were there at least 40 mins before eating. Beth seemed to be the only one there on a Wednesday night when we went. She was behind the bar then did the waitressing then cooked our food. This maybe the reason for the slow service. However she was very friendly and the food was yummy.
I’d never had Eritrean food before coming here, and it is similar to Ethiopian but not as good, in my opinion. We ordered the lamb and chicken tibbs with alicha and salad on the side. The food was good but not the best I’ve ever had. She asked if we wanted spicy and we said medium spicy. It was more like between mild and medium, but that’s fine because I’d rather be able to eat than not. Overall, it was good enough to go back to but only if they had way more people working.

This place was amazing. I recently had a bad experience with Ethiopian food and was turned off. This has been my favorite food since I was in college, which was about six years ago. So one random night, I meet up with a buddy of mines and had drinks and food here. It was to die for. Now I am back to being the die hard Ethiopian food fan I have always been.

Great service. Beth always make you feel like you’ve been here before or that you’re a long time friend. The food is delicious. Ask for the fish soup, not on menu but delicious! The traditional dishes can be made as spicy as you like. Music is great. I highly recommend this place. The drinks are well made. It’s another U Street gem.

This food is bad but not totally terrible. The bathrooms are totally terrible!
Overall, this is one of the worst Ethiopian restaurants in the area. Please go elsewhere.
Lastly, I think they charged us the white-​man price for off menu items because the combo is ridiculously expensive ($ 30).

Very good, very authentic. The tibs was great. The food and service were both excellent.

Selam blew me away. While I am not typically a huge fan of Ethiopian food (which to my relatively uninitiated tastes is pretty much indistinguishable from Selam’s Eritrean roots), Selam’s renditions totally hit the spot. I was there for a Sunday brunch date at about 1230 and was surprised to be the only person there (perhaps 3 of the 25 or so seats at the restaurant were filled over the course of our meal). Nonetheless, the warmth and friendliness of the bartender and waitstaff was enough to create a warm and inviting atmosphere.
We ordered (and I would recommend) the sampler combo, which basically comes with a selection of 3 veggies and a choice of protein. Between the two of us, we were able to pick two proteins, and went with fish and meat. Upon asked if we would like it spicy, we enthusiastically agreed. Everything that came out was delicious, with a good amount of heat (though not overwhelming — other than the salad in which the occasional raw jalapeño would be an occasional unpleasant surprise). I still havent gotten over my distaste for the sour and spongy bread that seems to be a staple of this type of place, but thats probably just a personal preference.
My prior opinion of Ethiopian /​Eritrean cuisine as an inferior, blander version of indian food has been shaken. Selam was a game changer — congrats!

Kind of small, kind if dark, we closed our eyes and let Unilocal lead us by the hand into a rather questionable looking restaurant (in the basement no less, sunken off the street). This was lunch on the weekend. My girlfriend had wanted to find the classic sit-​on-​the-​floor Ethiopian kind of place to take me that she envisioned, and this is NOT one of those places. A few «locals» lingered about, chatting up the waitress behind the bar, we could not have felt more out of place. We sat down, talked about it, and were about to bail and seek higher ground… when the waiter (turns out to be owner) came up with a warm smile and welcomed us, and began talking about Eritrean food. We defrosted a bit and decided to go for it.
What a great decision that turned out to be. He brought us waves of wonderful, wonderful food until we could eat no more. All the while, dwelling at our table with engaging stories enlightening us about Eritrean food and culture. It was a great experience, opened up my mind to entirely new foods, and I can’t wait to go back. Highly recommended, just set your expectations appropriately about the environment and experience.

I really enjoyed my meal here; the food was good, but the service was particularly friendly and really made my day! The lady serving me was so warm, friendly, talkative, and helpful, and everyone in the restaurant was also friendly, like they were all family. I was saying how good the spinach was and some guy turned around and said «the spinach is off the chain, right!?»
I had the veggie combo platter, which was good, but I wish it came with more options (I’m a fan of the 5 – 6 option platters). The salad was good, the lentils were okay (a little too thin for me), the potato/​cabbage/​carrot mixture was good, and the spinach was incredible!!! I don’t know what the heck they did to the spinach but it was absolutely delicious. So delicious that i ordered a side of spinach and injera to go and ate it for breakfast. Even cold the next morn, it was delicious.

If I wasn’t meeting a friend here for dinner, I could have easily passed this restaurant up, especially since located downstairs off U street (which is packed with tons of restaurants and bars).
Selam is pretty tiny. They have about 5 tables and a bar. Love the fact that this is a family owned restaurant, run by the family members themselves. The daughter (Beth) does the bartending and table waiting, while her brothers cook.
Since they had no lamb for the evening, the entire table decided on the beef tibs ($ 12). One medium spicy, one spicy, and one super spicy. Took some time for our food to come out, and when it finally did, I thought it was just okay. Even though we ordered different levels of spiciness, they all looked, and actually tasted the same. The beef was tender, but didn’t have a lot of flavor like the tibs I had at other Ethiopian restaurants. I would have liked my dish to have more spices and heat added to it. Enjoyed the fact that the dish came with a side of spinach and tomato salad.
Service was great. Beth was very friendly and welcoming. She loves birthdays! She hooked us up with complimentary birthday shots, which was very sweet of her.
Not sure if I’d come back here, especially since there are so many other Ethiopian restaurants in the area. But, I am glad that I came here.
BTW-​Not sure if it’s needed, but I was able to make reservations on a Saturday night.