Bole Ethiopian Restaurant

Bole is hands down one of the best Ethiopian restaurants in Oakland! The service is top notch, the food is prepared with so much love and care and the price is just right.
Our favorite dishes to get are the Meat or Veggie Sambusa and the Bole Meat Combo. You get a lot of variety and a ton of food for the price by going this route. Compared to other Ethiopian restaurants we’ve been to, Bole seems to have the most well seasoned dishes. The flavors contained in each bite are just amazing!
Why are you still reading this??? Head on over to Bole today!

I’m really picky about Ethiopian food, and this was excellent. I got the veggie combo. Super flavorful, great injera, warm and friendly staff.

Really delicious. We got the veggie and meat combo. The lamb dish was wonderful and smokey. I’ve ate a lot of Ethiopian food, but I’ve never tasted a dish like this. Super good. But the meat combo is all red meat and they wouldn’t substitute chicken for the ground beef which was disappointing. I am not a fan of the raw/​rare beef dish. Please consider offering chicken in the meat
combo. It would make it a real meat combo. Thank you!
They play Ethiopian music which I love!
The tej/​honey wine is made in Oakland and tastes great. Get the bottle!

I ordered a bunch of food to go on Sunday. It was awesome! I arrived at 2pm, so pretty quiet restaurant. It took 20 minutes for the food to be ready — which i thought was great timing. I absolutely loved the doro wot. It was my favorite. The kitfo was also good, and now I want to try the special kitfo. I could not believe the amount of food in the vegi lunch special. Those three dishes fed me and my husband for 5 meals. Very generous portions. I’m super excited to go back for more!

Very filling and fresh place to eat. If your new to eating eritrean food go for a veggie combo explore the flavors.

Visited this place for lunch. The place was not very busy, in fact only one other group so I was a little nervous about the meal. We got the veggie and meat combo which comes with four vegetarian dishes and 1 meat dish which is a choice between lamb or beef. The vegetarian dishes were good and really as expected. It was nothing incredible but it was decent. For the meat dish we chose the lamb which wasn’t the greatest. I think the veggie dishes were much better. The lamb sauce was not memorable with few pieces of the lamb. Overall, the food was decent. I don’t believe the injera was gluten free which is pretty typical for most Ethiopian restaurants in the US.

Super yummy food served by the most adorable owners. Hugely enjoyed the Derek Tibbs — a gigantic helping of yummily marinated and sautéed beef that came with grilled onions and tomatoes, served over a bed of delicious injera. Definitely worth every penny, especially when you consider that it’s almost like having a gigantic steak’s worth of beef, but all livened up.
Bole is a wonderful new addition to what’s already a fairly good selection of Ethiopian restaurants here in the Oakland /​East Bay area, and I hope more people get to check it out. I’ll be back to try other items on the menu, particularly ones that are more on the vegetarian side of things.

Not as good as Dareye or Ethiopia, but they deliver, so I’m in.

Yay! Bole is open for lunches again. The dinner-​only hours were very inconvenient. The people are still very lovely and welcoming. Super thrilled to be eating here again more often.
I had the sambbusas today and I really like the meat ones but not the lentil. The lentil was too bland for me even with the spicy dipping sauce. They’re philo pastry with stuff inside… the minced beef and spices is really very tasty.
Main dish was the bozena shiro. It was awesome, as usual… It’s probably my favorite food. It hits all my favorite Ethiopian flavors in the same dish and since I didn’t have to over-​order, I can go alone which means I get to eat it more often.
Bozena shiro seems to be mitten shiro with beef. When I get the veggie combo, the one I eat first is the mitten shiro, so finding the non-​veg version of my favorite veg dish was ideal.
The menu still needs some work. It doesn’t, for instance, say that salad is included with all entrees. It doesn’t say that if you order 2 entrees, you still only get one portion of salad. If I didn’t get kind and personalized service, I would have missed my favorite dish because the description doesn’t match how it tastes or how it’s served. I’ve ordered other things that come in the steaming iron cauldon and not been at all disappointed in the flavors… but they weren’t the bozena shiro.
What makes this 5 stars: the food is *amazing* and these are people who remember me even though it’s been months. Many people who come through the door are greeted with joy. It’s like making friends who want to feed you.

9÷20− Never had Ethiopian food before, so it was a really exciting to me to try injera for the first time this Sunday. Not sure what to expect, but it was surprisingly tart to me, and the consistancy was sort of like a thin sponge cake, just with larger holes. Made for real easy tearing and picking up meat with without breaking.
Even though I was still working on digesting all the goods I stuffed myself with at the Eat Real food fest earlier in the day, I couldn’t pass on a full order of gored gored, cubed raw/​rare beef that was dry seasoned (spicy!.. but not crazy hot) and cooked in what appeared to be some kinda of ghee/​clarified butter judging from the color. Portion is HUGE. The plate had to be 16″+ in diameter and the entire surface was covered one large injera and the cubed meat was on top with some salad and dressing shifted to the side. On top of that we were given a WHOLE OTHER injera in a basket to eat with.
Yea… I had to take more than half of it home in a togo box because there was just so much. Not complaining though, it made for a very very delicious lunch the next day!

LOVE this place for several reasons:
* Though delivery is only in a limited area, it’s FAST
* Restaurant is super clean, tidy and welcoming
* It’s NEVER busy which means a quiet meal to relax
* It’s the most satisfying pick up experience I’ve ever had
* The food is flavorful, diverse, fresh, and well priced
Is there better tasting Ethiopian? Sure.
Is there a «whole package» as good as this place? I don’t think so.
We order here maybe once a month, at least. They are open late, always smiling and helpful, and SO YUMMY. ** I’ve never had a meat dish here — only the vegan options

I agree with everyone else. The music I guess could be better (Ethiopian maybe instead of Kenny G?) but it’s pretty great. Clean, fresh, spicy.
I had the veggie combo. So good. My only request is can solo-​diners have half/​orders? If they say yes, I’ll eat here every day, too.

The need for some meaty injera goodness struck me while I was driving down Telegraph Ave. Probably the best place in Oakland to get this feeling :-)
And oh wonder, I spotted parking right in front of Bole, so I took it as a sign, parked my car, fed the meter and went inside. First thing the guy behind the counter told me was that they have parking in the back. Dang!
The place was empty on a Tuesday at 1pm, which seemed a bit weird to me. But I ordered Kitfo anyway, cause that’s how I roll. Raw, please!
While I waited, I sat down and scrolled through the Unilocal reviews to find out whether I would be poisoned by raw meat from a place that was all empty at this time of day. But Unilocal again eased my mind.
Service was super nice, place was extraordinarily clean, price was good, portion was good (not too little or too much, just right). I thoroughly enjoyed the food, although the injera was a bit too chewy for my taste.
I need to come back for dinner service and see what’s going on then. Nothing is sadder than eating all alone in an empty restaurant… (3.5 rating so far… we will see)

Best Ethiopian food I’ve had in the bay, hands down. And I eat Ethiopian a lot. Veggie platter is perfection

I love Ethiopian restaurants especially when they feel like side-​of-​the-​road cafes where you can kick back and relax for an hour or even more. The owner at Bole really made my friends and I feel at home, he served with the brightest smile.
Obviously the food was dope (I’ve never disliked an Ethiopian restaurant to be honest). To boot, it was incredibly cheap even with a beer.

Great food, good quality, very friendly staff. Usual delivery is about an hour and worth the wait. I’m a fan!
bon appetit

I ordered the same thing I ordered last time, Gored Gored rare and Meat Sambusas. I ordered on Eat24 at 5 :35pm, with a pickup at 6pm. I was driving from Walnut Creek, so I drove slow., figuring, I’d have to wait maybe 5 minutes. I got there at 5:55. there were no customers. The lady said they were preparing the meal. I said no problem. «I know I’m early, I’ll wait in the car». I waited 20 minutes before my order was ready. Still, there were no customers in the place.
I’m very disappointed by the lack of earnest at an apology. It was apparent she didn’t care if I came back in the future. Sad, because I like the food there. Shame, they lost a customer because of bad, to no customer service.

We ordered two combos on a Monday night– our food took over TWO HOURS and two phone calls to arrive.
When it finally did, everything was freezing cold, congealed, & the salad was just plain MIA. We had to throw away part of one dish because it is served raw & was now so old we were worried it would make us sick. Everything else tasted absolutely awful. Bland, overcooked, & disgusting.
Again, it took over TWO HOURS to get our food. The delivery driver said (without apology) that they were «just busy». On a Monday.
We called Grubhub to complain, they called the restaurant, & then called us back to say the Bole would be DRIVING BACK TO PICK UP OUR FOOD AS «PROOF» before they would consider doing anything about it.
So, not only have we been waiting literally hours for dinner already, but now they need to TAKE OUR FOOD BACK (in 30 minutes– guess they aren’t that busy)?! What kind of establishment would ever dare behave in such a way?!
Never, ever ordering from such an unprofessional excuse for a restaurant again. Food is garbage, service is worse. How they haven’t burned themselves to the ground yet surrounded by so much superior competition is a mystery.

Based on the reviews here on Unilocal I was all set to add another excellent Oakland Ethiopian restaurant to my list. But after dinner at Bole Ethiopian I was a little disappointed. Since I typically have the vegetarian combo at most Ethiopian places I go to I decided to have the same at Bole for a good comparison. The service was very friendly and my food arrived super fast and was nicely presented. I didn’t think the flavors were as fresh and interesting as at least a few other Ethiopian places nearby though. Everything seemed a bit bland for my taste too. I saw one poster here commented that their injera was made with high-​quality teff flour. But I had the impression the injera I had wasn’t made with teff at all.
If Bole were the only Ethiopian place in town, I would keep going. But with sooo many other very excellent places to choose from, I probably won’t go back. Though they aren’t exactly restaurants, for the best in Ethiopian flavors, you can’t beat Café Dareye just a few blocks down Telegraph or Mame Café on Oakland Avenue.

This review is for delivery only.
Delivery was 25 minutes late through seamless. Food came in Styrofoam containers — pretty sure that’s banned in Oakland.
Food was not up to par with Ethiopian cuisine I’ve had in the past. Overly sour and salty.