How can you tell if a city is booming?
If you're a developer, you count the number of new-home starts. If you're a demographer, you track population growth. If you're an economist, you look at the unemployment rate.

And if you're a restaurant reviewer, you survey the ethnic dining scene.
I don't need real estate figures, government statistics or Arizona State University reports to convince me that the Valley is growing at an explosive rate. I can tell from the variety of exotic ethnic restaurants that have been opening for business. In just the past two years, for example, both Laotian and Philippine fare have been added to the Valley's ethnic mix.

Now, two more cuisines from far-off lands have landed in our corner of the desert Southwest. Both may give skittish natives a few moments' pause, at least initially. After all, most of us aren't used to eating with our hands, or watching grilled chicken hearts get peeled off a skewer. But the Ethiopian dishes at Lalibela and the Brazilian rodizio at Rio Brazilian Steak House provide us with a risk-free way to explore the world's fare without worrying about jet lag, visas or vaccinations.

Lalibela is named after an ancient Ethiopian capital, site of a magnificent church carved below ground out of granite. However, the restaurant still hasn't quite stripped away all the traces of the previous tenant, a Mexican place. Ethiopian Tourist Board posters help. So does music from the homeland, spilling softly over the sound system. Stylized scenes of the story of Solomon and Sheba (she was an Ethiopian queen) hang from the walls, painted on skins. And coarsely woven cloth embroidered with brightly colored geometric designs adorn glass-topped tables.

If these audio and visual cues don't furnish enough hints about what's coming, the table setting surely will. It's not what you see, it's what you don't see--silverware. Like most Africans, Ethiopians eat with their hands. You won't see much chinaware, either. That's because diners eat off communal platters.

But what sets Ethiopians apart from their neighbors is how they scoop up dinner. Elsewhere, Africans use grains like rice or millet as a vehicle for their meats and sauces. In west Africa, for example, you squeeze the grain and toppings into a tight ball and then flick it into your mouth with the top of your fingers. But Ethiopians rely on injera to wrap and transport their food. It's a thin, spongy, slightly sour bread that looks like what would result if you mated a tortilla with a crepe.

The communal platter, a large round tray, comes lined with injera and covered with small mounds of whatever dishes you order. But before you dig in, take note of communal dining etiquette. If, for instance, three of you are sharing dinner, mentally divide each dish your group ordered into thirds. Don't stray into someone else's territory, even if there's something that's caught your eye. It's considered piggish. And use your right, "clean" hand to pick up your food. That's because in much of Africa, the left hand is used for purposes you don't want to talk about at the dinner table.

For the most part, Ethiopian food isn't as wildly exotic as you might suspect. Lalibela's small menu offers stews of meat, fowl and vegetables called wat. What is unique, though, are the highly seasoned sauces, fragrant but almost never too spicy hot.

African cuisine doesn't recognize the concept of "appetizers." So don't look for much in the way of premeal nibbles at Lalibela. But if you'd like to get under way by blowing off the roof of your mouth, you could munch seneg. They're fiery whole chile peppers stuffed with fiery chopped jalapenos, onions and tomatoes. Unless you have asbestos lips, I'd counsel discretion.

You're best off diving right into the communal platter. Try doro wat, an Ethiopian staple. You'll get a piece of chicken on the bone, cooked in spiced butter and moistened by a lusty berbere sauce fashioned from mild red chiles and a rackful of spices. It comes with hard-boiled egg, a traditional part of the presentation. Sega wat is quite similar, except it relies on tender cubes of beef instead of poultry.

Alicha sega wat features the same beef cubes, but this time they come bathed in a rich, currylike sauce scented with turmeric. Yebeg sega tibs, a weekend special, gives you an opportunity to sample lamb, bite-size pieces pan-fried with green pepper and onions. Dip the lamb into awaze, a potent red pepper sauce that reminds me of harissa, a hot pepper condiment used in north Africa as an accompaniment to couscous.