Eating with one's hands, a practice generally discouraged by families who own silverware, makes clumping hummus into a shape that resembles a burning VCR possible. Enjoy silverwareless eating experiences with today's Groupon: for $20, you get $40 worth of food and drink at Demera Ethiopian Restaurant, located in Uptown.

In an embrace of authentic Ethiopian dining styles, no utensils are used at Demera. Instead, diners eat with their hands, scoop up sustenance with injera—the spongy sourdough flatbread made from fermented teff flour—or simply intake the cuisine through telepathically charged diffusion. The restaurant, unlike the myriad Ethiopian drive-thru fast-food restaurants that have popped up around Chicago in recent months, focuses on authentic Ethiopian cuisine made from fresh ingredients. Commence consumption with the sambussa sampler ($6.50), traditional dough shells with beef, chicken, tuna, spinach, and vegetarian filling. Diners can split a messob platter, choosing from Demera's bevy of dishes—get six vegetarian portions ($25.95), such as the ground chickpeas of the ye-shimbra assa or the mixed legumes of the berbere-sauced shiro, or curb carnivorous urges with six meat portions ($28.25), such as the doro alicha wot, lemon-marinated chicken drumsticks stewed in a mild mix of veggies and spices. Individual dishes are also available in vegetarian, beef, poultry, seafood, and lamb variations.

Demera roasts its own buna, or Ethiopian coffee—enjoy the beans of its labor with a pot for one ($2.50) of the brew. Ethiopian beer and honey wine are also available. As a bonus, Demera will give customers a free glass of wine if they redeem their Groupon in September or November. Tether motorized donkeys to Demera's hitching post and step inside its intimate interiors, decorated with evocative art, for traditional and tantalizing Ethiopian fare.

Reviews

Time Out Chicago gives Demera Ethiopian Restaurant four stars:

• The doro alicha wat (lemon-marinated, slightly sweet chicken legs) had been stewed long enough that it needed only the lightest pinch with injera to come off the bone; the kitfo (Ethiopian steak tartare) was cool and pure in flavor, and offset by the spicy chile powder sprinkled over it. – David Tamarkin

More than 150 Yelpers and OpenTable users give it four stars:

• The setting is small and intimate. It is in a great location to go out on the town afterwards! – Opentable.com user who dined on 04/09/2010
• The food was really good, and there was a lot of it! We ordered the sambusa sampler (or something like that), and it came with spinach, lentil, beef, tuna, and chicken sambusas. They were crispy, hot, and flavorful. – Jenny G., Yelp