Emily C

I ordered on uber eats and it came faster than expected. Super delicious, the injera is fresh and the lamb with collard greens very nice. The portion is huge! My favorite however was the lentil dish - I think it was misir wat. Will def order again.

Julie Berger

5/5 Ethiopian food!!! I’ve now been here three times in the last two years, and have traveled from all over Manhattan to come eat at this Awash! I love their Kitfo and vegetarian sampler platter. I’ll have to keep coming back so I can try everything on the menu! This isn’t fast food and it’s meant to be enjoyed slowly, so don’t eat here if you’re in a hurry.

Ann

The Best Ethiopian food compared to CT and FL. We have been regulars for 20 years. Be sure to go for dinner, especially on the weekends and you will be rewarded with the best chef!!

Prami

Awesome food! I love that you get to eat with your hands! There may be a cultural disconnect with the way that they wait on you but they are very respectful and nice with smiles! Get the platter with meats and veggies! So good!

Koala

The food is very good and tasty. Service is excellent. We orders Awash Special for 2 and a meat combo for 2. All put on one big plate for us to share. The servers kept checking on us and filling up the injera 3 times. The food is great. Will visit again.

Luke Azevedo

04/23/25 Started with the tella (a honey wine, coffee and jalapeño cocktail) and Timatim Fitfit for an appetizer. We had the awash chicken and the Yatakilt Alicha. Everything was incredible and fresh and flavorful. Prices were reasonable and service was good. My first time having Ethiopian food, it couldn’t have been better.

+1

nathan anand

My first time trying Ethiopian. Food was amazing especially the red lentils. Meat was so so . I had beg tibs Would surely come back again here. Service needs to be more attentive

+22

Alana Rogers

Our go-to Ethiopian restaurant and comfort food spot! We’ve ordered takeout multiple times and it’s always very flavorful and spicy! The portions are large, so we always have leftovers. Love this place so much!!!

T. Swartz

A couple of weeks ago after celebrating our 17th Wedding Anniversary at an African drumming circle in Central Park, my husband and I decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants - Awash! (The Manhattan Valley location.) Since 1994 this family owned business has been serving astonishingly delicious food to their fortunate constituency. We decided to dine outside and enjoy the beautiful September evening that graced us.We ordered the Gomen Besiga (lamb with collard greens) the Veggie Sampler and washed it down with an Ethiopian Beer and Honey Wine. For dessert we had Ethiopian coffee, and their decadent rum cake - which was given to us on the house to celebrate the occasion. I highly encourage you to eat here. We are truly privileged to have such world class, authentic Ethiopian cuisine mere blocks from where we live.

Sean Gelles

vegan options galore. best Ethiopian in the US. order the veggie sambusas and combo platter. delicious!!! they have great meat dishes too.

V K

It was my first time trying Ethiopian and I’m happy I tried it here. We got a sampling platter and everything was delicious. I highly recommend their lentil stews! 5/5!

Michele Guttermuth

Loved loved this place. It was my first time getting Ethiopian food and I thought it was amazing. Got the veggie platter and the spices/seasoning was soo good. The combo together was delicious- really loved the beets complementing the chickpea mix. Everything was wrapped in a type of bread/wrap which has a kind of grainy texture but is very complementary. Got this for take out and 100% would get again. Large portion as we had it for 2 meals.

Sankofa Tafari NYC

From the moment I walked in a beautiful portrait of His Majesty greeted me. The waitress was right there but I’m doing take out tonight. As I walked towards the bar I was greeted by more royalty and it really made me feel good. I’m going to enjoy my coffee and admire the beautiful women who work here. I ordered a veggie combo and it was loaded. And came with three pieces of bread. This is sabbath dinner and I’ll have some left for breakfast in the morning. Very good food, very good service, music, and some history on the walls. Nice place.

+8

Konstantin Burla

Great Ethiopian food here! I haven't been to an Ethiopian restaurant before so I didn't know what to expect. When the plates arrived, I was confused as I didn't know the tradition of the ethiopian cuisine. The waitress was very nice and explained to our table how to eat! Turned out to be delicious. Would definitely come again.

+1

It’s ironically called big bar even though spaces are very limited in here - it’s definitely a vibe though with its cash only and overall divey atmosphere. Lots of disclaimers all around but if you know what you want and can be expedient about it, you’ll be well served here.

Super cozy and cute. No wait despite NYE weekend but still busy/lively. Love the red lights. Bartender was alright / weird vibes. Maybe they were tired / had cruddy customers before me. Just had a glass of a house red

Well... I don't know how I never came here before but what a vibe. Soaked in red light, cash only, a very chill, eclectic crew, all of that made it for me a perfect later night after dinner spot, even if the back bar is unsurprisingly thin and I low-key hate carrying cash on me these days unless I'm a regular somewhere. As an old head with a kid, I'm not sure when I'll be back but when the opportunity presents itself, I'm down.

Hilton N Webb Jr

My friends took me to this place for my birthday on October 30th and I really enjoyed the vegetarian platter and even picked at the meat platter. There were five of us and we had two bottles of wine and the bill was only $300. Not bad especiallysince I didn't have to chip in.

Will Tkacs

Excellent food, really some of the best and an authentic Ethiopian dining experience. My one gripe would be with the service. Slow on the refills and never really checked in very often.

ManhattanNYC

Awash was recommended by my Ethiopian friend as the best place to try their food. The welcome was warm and the service was friendly. We were five and initially wanted to order samplers with other items from the menu but the food sharing fee is a very unusual and alogical rule and we had to change our mind. Finally, we ordered individually different food from the menu. I tried beef and lentil Sambusa and beef Siga Tibs. The food was delicious, I really enjoyed Sambusa. Overall, we enjoyed the evening but considering numerous factors we decided that it was worth trying but doubt to return shortly.

Ben VanWagoner

Pretty disappointing. Server seemed confused and unwilling to accept that we wanted a three-person platter for five people (not that hungry!) so they charged us instead an extra 60-ish bucks for food we didn't want and couldn't eat. Compared to Massawa (north a few blocks) the food was bland, and the drinks were extremely mediocre. Can't recommend!

Alvaro Alvarez

The food was incredibly good. I had no idea that Ethiopian food was so delicious. However, the service was awful. They were just sooooo slow and they had to take our order like 3 times. Don’t go there with hunger or you will starve. They took like one hour just to bring an appetizer.

At the end of the day it's a bar.... The bartender and bouncer are the singular most offensive and pretensous people I have ever met in my life. Full of self importance and a vibe like they are keepers of all. They essence of the place has great bones and a good vibe overall... Just hope you catch the bartender on a night she isn't feeling like being rude and stuck up.Its far away from a premium bar and has an attitude problem equal to the snobbiest bars in all of Manhattan.... It's a hard Miss.

I stopped by Big Bar while visiting New York, and it was one of the most disappointing experiences I’ve ever had. The bartender was incredibly rude from the very beginning — no greeting, no smile, just an attitude like I was bothering her by even being there. She clearly had no idea what she was doing and couldn’t answer the simplest questions about the place. I didn’t even end up ordering a drink because the atmosphere was so unpleasant and unprofessional. I left after a few minutes, completely unimpressed. For a city like New York, where good service is everywhere, this was a huge letdown. I definitely wouldn’t recommend this place to anyone.

I had a very disappointing experience at Bog Bar in New York. We asked about the recipe for a Whiskey Sour, and were told it’s just whiskey and lemon juice. When we mentioned that a classic Whiskey Sour usually includes egg white, the staff became rude, told us not to “teach the bartender how to do their job,” and we were basically kicked out shortly after. Instead of a friendly conversation or a simple explanation, we were met with disrespect and attitude. Customer service matters, and no one deserves to be treated like that. Would not recommend this place.

I would leave zero stars if I could— I work service too and never leave reviews, this case was extremely bad and deserves to be shared. Absolutely horrible experience with the femme presenting bartender on a pretty empty Saturday. Extremely rude, condescending, unbearable and had to leave pretty immediately, it was ageist and very unpleasant to be around. The two lonely men sitting there were also questionable and she seemed way kinder to them, than to us fellow non-men with a kind demeanor. Will not come back, thank you for making us feel horrible. Thank you!

Looks like some bartenders take tips for granted, expecting tips while being so rude to customers with the excuse of “being busy”. Wow, what a good reason for being disrespectful of customers. Reminder of the principle of a tip (which unfortunately has been forgotten): tips are here to reward good services for bartenders who deserve them, they should not be taken for granted. So just one thing busy bartender: if you want some tips, just do your job properly by being just slightly nicer, and not just demand “give me tips “. For your pride at least!

Big Bar is hard to miss with its bright red interior lights shining onto the sidewalk, but when you walk inside you’ll have wished you did miss it. I recently had the displeasure of stopping by this ‘dive bar’ and it was an experience I won’t soon forget; unfortunately. This bar harbors a particularly rancid vibe. Everything from the bar tender’s hall monitor attitude, to the Gen X clientele sitting at the bar top, to the bald man in a bright blue sweater standing outside holding the door looking to start arguments. It all meshed into a miserable, spoilt, and rank experience. This self touted ‘dive bar’ is a total disaster from start to finish. The atmosphere is dreadful. The space is cramped and awkward. The decor is tacky and lacking grace. It is all too evident that they tried too hard to come off as this trendy, relaxed, dingy dive bar but you can feel how incredibly gauche and trite the ambience really is. The supposed "dive bar" charm was nowhere to be found. Instead, it felt more like a sterile and sanitized version, where an older crowd can live out their dreams cosplaying being a patron at a dive bar. Without actually having to step foot in one. The raw authenticity of a dive bar is nowhere to be found here. Instead what you will encounter is a travesty of such magnitude that it defies the very essence of what it seeks to embody. Stripped of any genuine character, it is a desolate void. Big Bar’s ambiance is a facade. A cheap costume masking a soul devoid of grit or character. Stepping inside, the sterility of the place struck me immediately. But it was the customer service that truly revealed the rot at the core. At the helm of this charade was a bartender whose demeanor is a chilling specter of authoritarianism. Her presence fills the room and adds to the festering of a putrid environment. We did not get her name, but she is a heavy set brunette woman with glasses and nose piercings. She made comments that were teetering on discriminatory and seemed to convey a covert racism. She was abrasive with a patron over a seemingly arbitrary qualm. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear other patrons share a similar experience. The libations, one might hope, would salvage some semblance of a good experience, but they were as soulless as the decor. The drinks are underwhelming and bereft of any skill or care in their making. They didn’t seem to have any thing of substance worth drinking. All the bartender had was well liquor and flat beer. And in a location filled with other options that have better drinks and a more refined atmosphere, we did not stay long. In sum, this Gen X haven is truly a pit of despair and disappointment. This establishment is a blight upon the landscape of nightlife. A soulless simulacrum devoid of the grit, grime, and charm that define a dive bar. It feels more of a sterile tomb and I would implore seekers of a genuine experience to look elsewhere.

Bouncer dressed like where’s Waldo for Halloween tonight is a problem for a small business like this. I walked in with a few girls and he was hitting on the customers inside I did not see anyone in the front of the door so I walked inside. I thought he was just some big goofy Halloween dressed older over weight guy talking to younger girls. As I got though the door he started getting aggressive super weird because he’s a lot shorter than me and I’m not an aggressive person. He asked for ids I thought he was being funny but still reached in my back pocket to accommodate him. That’s when things got really weird he started acting aggressive so I turned around to leave because I don’t want to hurt this bully so I said I’m gonna just leave.. That’s when I asked the girls I was with to come he decided to follow me out screaming have a good day just so we are clear it’s night time! This place should really watch who they hire because clearly they don’t! You have been warned stay away from this place!

I really regret to change my review here. I really liked the place and used to go there. There is a specific bartender working there that is absolutely rude. She made a whole scene because some people tipped only $5 for 5 cans of beer. She was ringing some bells and her friends were shouting 'you should tip your bartender and blah blah..' and pointing to those people (that had actually tipped). Let alone that she earlier did lift me from my seat for her those friends of her to sit... When we told her that we understand that you are busy but this doesnt justify you being rude she took our drinks from us (had just bought them and i had personally tipped $3 for a jin) and asked us to leave the place. She just ruins that great bar and the nice vibe.