CherCher Ethiopian Cuisine — Restaurant in Bethesda

This place is a joke. I can’t comment on their food because I never received the pick-up order I paid ahead for.

I used THEIR ACTUAL WEBSITE (not a third-party app) to place a pick-up order. I was charged and received both an email and text confirmation.

When I arrived, they had no idea what I was talking about. According to the woman working, no order had come through for preparation. I presented my receipt and proof of payment, and she got completely flustered and said I must have made a mistake. No, I really didn’t. I ordered on their website, ordered to the correct location, and paid for my food. Perhaps, instead of immediately accusing a customer of making a mistake, she could have taken a moment to review my confirmation and devise an appropriate solution.

We had to call a manager since the woman onsite had no authority to do anything. Then why have her working alone if she can’t assist with a routine pick-up order?

The manager was equally as unhelpful. She just kept repeating that they don’t use Door Dash anymore. I have no idea how Door Dash came up – I didn’t order through Door Dash. I ordered on their site. If their site redirects or routes orders to Door Dash that isn’t really my fault or problem. It’s an error with their site!

My receipt and bank account both said CherCher NOT Door Dash (plus I was picking up – not having anything delivered).

To make a long story short, their website glitched, and they were unwilling to accept responsibility or fix the problem. I left with no food, and they didn’t even refund my payment. I had to call and do it through my bank.

A complete waste of time and a very frustrating interaction.

Mistakes happen, but to immediately blame the customer before fully understanding the issue, to behave unprofessionally, and then to be completely unwilling to resolve an issue that THEIR website created is unacceptable. No one needs this headache when simply trying to pick up food on their way home from work. Avoid ordering on their site. It will glitch, and they won’t have the patience or...

Pretty good food. We ordered the large vegan and meat combo, carry out. It came in two containers, one for the vegan dishes, one for the meat dishes. Even though it was carryout, they tried to present it the usual way, placing the food on one big flatbread and wrapping in the ends of the flatbread to fit in the square container. They gave us three extra flatbreads.

A note on the containers: they are not very sturdy on the bottom. I walked to the restaurant and back and held the food in my arms, supporting it from the bottom. The bottom corners kept caving in, and I guess that pushed the sauce out of the containers. When I got home, I discovered major sauce spillage in the bag. Luckily the bag did not leak. Otherwise the containers were fine. Microwaveable and made with corn starch materials.

A note on online ordering: the options for ordering the combo online were confusing. This combo comes with 4 meat dishes. The meat dishes have the option of mild or spicy. There is a section where all of the meat options are listed, and you think you would have to pick 4 because you get 4 meat dishes. But you can only select 1 option. It was confusing, so we called it in instead of ordering online.

The food was very tasty, very good. The sour flatbread was soft, fluffy, and VERY sour. Too sour for us personally, but it was mitigated when eaten with the other dishes. Sadly, there was only one piece of chicken. Very disappointing.

The staff were relatively neutral but efficient. Also obviously aware that many people have difficulty pronouncing the dish names 😆. The place was nice and clean. Strangely, the place smelled like pho to me. I don't know if this is usual or I'm identifying the smell wrong. It wasn't bad, just something I found...

Great food, garbage service. If you want anything more than getting your food and leaving, go elsewhere. We came in for a special family dinner with six. Were greeted with decency and seated. Server was pretty much non existent, didn't provide any help or answer any of our questions and was even pretty dismissing. It was fine because we're very well versed with Ethiopian food, but wasn't pleasant by any means. Got our food, never once got a water refill or got checked up on. Our server completely disappeared for about 90 minutes. We finished our meal and were chatting for a while but it became awkward when after two entire hours our server still hadn't checked in with us. We then noticed they had completely checked out and were eating food in the corner and STILL never paid attention. We asked another server for the check and they rang us up. Before giving the bill, the original server interrupted to apply the auto gratuity to our party of six even though she had not once checked in on us. I understand the party gratuity, I have been a server for a long time, but completely neglecting a table because you know you're going to auto grat them is completely unacceptable. It took another 5-10 min to get our bill as the two servers obviously tried to figure things out and basically pull a fast one on us. Didn't see anywhere on the menu that 6+ is auto gratuity either but to be honest I didn't check to start the meal. I'd give one star here but clearly the chef takes great pride in their food because damn was it good. If they got some decent service it would be a 5 star restaurant but I haven't been so disappointed in...