Can you call something new if it’s been open longer than two years? Normally that would be a hard no, but as we’ve been in a pandemic most of this time and I had no idea that Horn of Africa was serving Ethiopian food just a block off Summer Avenue, I say yes.

I love Ethiopian food, am a longtime fan of Summer Avenue and drive it nearly every day. I’ve lamented the closure of several Ethiopian restaurants over the last couple of years, check out Yelp at least once a week to see if there’s anything new, and am at Kay Bakery more than I really should be.

Yet while Horn of Africa is in the same small strip center, it’s at the north end, the sign is small, and I only noticed it last week. The online menus confused me a little (there’s a photo of the real menu with this story), so I wasn’t sure what to expect when we went for lunch this weekend.

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But I didn’t expect to hear that it opened in 2019, I can tell you that.

Happily, what I most craved was on the menu: Foul, a dish of mashed fava beans also spelled ful or fuul and pronounced fool. I’ve loved this dish since I first tasted it at Derae, a now-closed Ethiopian restaurant on South Highland.

Everybody loves bean dip, whether it’s hummus or a layered Mexican dip. Foul ($10) belongs on that list. The beans are cooked with tomatoes, onions, red pepper and olive oil, mashed (not pureed like hummus), and served with a bright and tangy salad of tomato, onion, and cilantro in lemon juice to go on top.

Instead of injera, the traditional Ethiopian bread we’re coming to, I’ve always had foul served with a wheat roll. It’s a breakfast dish, and you can get it with eggs if you’d like. Samira Ahmad, the owner of Horn of Africa, is warm and hospitable and would surely accommodate your request.

But we ate it straight, with a side of sambusas ($5), one of each kind offered: Beef, chicken and lentil. As has been the case every time I’ve eaten sambusas, the lentil was my favorite. The tiny pulses have a comfortable earthiness that I like anyway, and they’re the perfect foil for the chiles and warm spices that flavor them. We were served a tamarind sauce that was mildly spicy, a little sweet and utterly delicious, and Ahmad sent me home with a spicier and equally good green sauce made with jalapeno peppers and ginger for my leftovers.

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We ordered the combination platter ($13), an assortment of vegetables served on injera, the spongy flatbread made from the grain teff, which is first fermented, resulting in a sour bread with an unusual texture. Chances are you won’t love it the first time you taste it, but I encourage persistence.

A side of injera comes with the platter, and here’s how you eat it. Tear off a small piece and with your right hand, scoop up your food and pop it all in your mouth. If you’re eating with someone you love and are so inclined, the custom is to feed them a bite of food with your left hand; do what you will.

The star of the platter was again the lentils, seasoned with berbere, an Ethiopian spice blend that combines chiles and warm spices such as cinnamon, coriander, cumin, ginger, cardamom, cloves and more — it’s the sister of an Indian curry blend, which varies tremendously depending on who makes it, but always identifiable for what it is.

After the vegetables sit on the platter for a few minutes, you’ll want to be sure to eat the injera beneath it, full of flavor from the lentils, the potatoes or the greens (all very good).

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On a cold day, have a cup of the fragrant tea, piping hot and very sweet. We ordered beef tibs, but were grateful that Ahmad didn’t hear us, because it would’ve been impossible to do any more food justice.

I’m so glad I’ve found Horn of Africa, yet another boost to Summer Avenue’s diverse bounty, in a strip with Kay Bakery, which is now also a panaderia, and El Sabor Latino, a Colombian restaurant. Just across the street is Los Comales, a Mexican restaurant, the middle-eastern Jerusalem Market and Queen of Sheba, which serves food from Yemen, just across the Red Sea from Ethiopia, or Avon Road from Horn of Africa.

Horn of Africa, 693 Avon Road; call 901-440-8589.