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James Barker
Raw meat, a manly dish in Ethiopia
Raw meat, a manly dish in Ethiopia

When tourist James Barker had dinner at the home of his Ethiopian hosts, he knew he'd have to be polite and eat whatever indigenous cuisine they offered him. He didn't know it wouldn't be cooked. Ethiopia is "a nation who generally live[s] on raw meat, and it cannot be supposed that they have made great advancement in their cuisine," the Briton wrote in "Narrative of a Journey to Shoa," an 1868 account of his Ethiopian odyssey. Nearly a sesqui-century later, it looks like Barker was prescient. Ethiopian restaurants in America often tout their vegan options, and Ethiopians certainly appreciate their culture's vegetarian cuisine. But they relish meat...