Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant (Washington, DC) | Influencer Restaurant Review by Keith Lee

Full Transcript: Keith Lee’s Dukem Ethiopian Restaurant Restaurant Review Video

“My family owns a restaurant in Washington, DC — Dukem Ethiopian restaurant. Nearly 30 years in, it’s coming to the point that we don’t know how much longer this business is gonna last.”

Well, we’re here. I got it. Let’s try it and rate it 1 to 10. As you can see, I got no bags in my hands. Me and my family are currently at Dukeum, and the only reason I got bags in my hands is because we’re gonna eat inside. The reason we’re eating inside is because Dukeum is booming. The reason I think it’s booming, God willing of course, is because her video is doing extremely well, and y’all as a community showed up and showed out.

I heard Ethiopian food is best eaten inside the restaurant, so we’re gonna go and eat, and I’ll tell you about my experience. Let’s do it.

So we already got the customer service. I 100% don’t believe it was the customer service that was why they were slow. And the marketing is working because, again, it’s booming, and there’s news here. So it’s not the marketing. Let’s go see if it’s the food.

We’re inside. We did our first news segment. I don’t know if I said this out loud, but I don’t really do news or media outlets specifically because I really like it to be about the food. At the end of the day, I’m just a person who eats food, prays, and stays with my family. I just be eating.

But for the first time, we did do news. Any news station or media outlet I turned down or left on read, don’t take it personal. I wasn’t planning on doing it either, so it wasn’t like I purposely went with them and didn’t go with y’all.

We’re inside, and we ask the waitress to give us whatever she suggests, and we wait for the food. They are extremely nice. I’m just watching their interactions with other people, and they can’t be faking that. In my opinion, it’s too genuine.

We had a conversation with the owner, and she said they used to average 10 people a day. We thought, like, wow.

Oh, I just got a good bite. It might be a little hot. I told you it’s spicy. I hope that was mine. Everything has a really earthy taste to it — very flavorful. The flavors come from everywhere, especially this sauce. This sauce is, what do you call it, robust. I’m going out on a limb and saying it: This is the best food we’ve had since we’ve been in DC.

You know the bread? Yeah, this is more. Oh, yeah. That was great. Check it, check it.

If you think I don’t know how to act, thank you. My bad.

There’s no reason this business should be closing. They shouldn’t even be considering closing. That beef short rib? 9 out of 10. That lamb? Also 8.5 out of 10. The raw beef? I don’t know the exact name of it. I liked it, but I also like medium-rare to rare steak, so it’s an acquired taste. The rest of my family didn’t like it. I gave it a 7, but everybody else gave it a 4 or 3. The sauce was extremely spicy, but it was really robust and really good.

The vegetables were extremely fresh. Honestly, none of my family really liked the fish. I usually get fish, and this one did have a lot of scales on it. But that one? You can tell. No scales, no meat, no nothing left.

What’d you give it? A 7.

Let’s start with the vegetable samosa, which I gave a 7.9 out of 10. But you can see this — we smashed it. Not just me, we.

What we wanted to do was leave $500 for each one of the staff as a tip, and then $1,000 to pay for anybody’s food that comes in line. The next $1,000 worth of food is on us. Absolutely. We appreciate you guys. The food was amazing.

Yeah, it’s insane to me that y’all were even thinking about closing. No promises, but I don’t think y’all are gonna close anytime soon.

Overall, God don’t make no mistakes. I appreciate the invite. God bless you. Have an amazing day. Y’all be safe.

No promises, but this makes it crazy. So if you wanna try it, come try it.