Eating out this weekend with my family at The Blue Nile Ethiopian restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan transported me back a few decades.

I smiled as I remembered the restaurant’s first location in Kerrytown, just north of downtown Ann Arbor.

Memories flooded back of eating at the woven mesob tables on the first floor of the renovated house in Kerrytown.

The Blue Nile was one of several houses renovated into international cuisine restaurants that opened within months of each other.

I was working in Ann Arbor at the time.

My husband and young son would meet me after work at The Blue Nile where we enjoyed the Ethiopian feast, eating our food with our fingers using the injera bread to scoop up the delicious vegetable, chicken, and meat dishes.

When we ate dinner there this weekend, we shared stories of our dinners there years ago, remembering the tables at the old place, eating in the upstairs when they expanded the restaurant in Kerrytown, and enjoying cups of the cinnamon-flavored Ethiopian tea.

This week’s photo of The Blue Nile’s overhead lighting looked to me as if the woven shapes were hand-painted with the red, green, and yellow colors of the Ethiopian flag.

Beautiful!