15 ms·

“Mamma Desta” and Ethiopian food in the U.S

68 points by samclemens 7y ago

Skunkleton 7y ago
I love Ethiopian food, but it has never seemed mainstream to me. Claiming it’s part of the shared American palate is going to need a citation.
- ummonk 7y ago
  Yeah, I've eaten Ethiopian food and liked it, but unless I've been completely out of the loop, Ethiopian food is not "an American fascination".
  - dang 7y ago
    Ok, we've taken fascination out of the title above.
- starpilot 7y ago
  Fake trends are the easiest hooks for clickbait these days, fueled by FOMO.
- jowiar 7y ago
  Within the US, of the cities I've lived in (NYC, DC, Philly, Pittsburgh, Chicago, SF), it's thoroughly mainstream in DC, and that's it. In NYC, Ethiopian Food is something I can get if I want it. In DC, everyone I knew ate Ethiopian food semi-regularly and many have their favorite hole in the wall that nobody else had been to. At least per https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/beyond-regional-circularity-emergence-ethiopian-diaspora/ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/beyond-regional-circ... -- the location of Ethiopian-Americans is: "If the descendants of Ethiopian-born migrants (the second generation and up) are included, the estimates range upwards of 460,000 in the United States (of which approximately 350,000 are in Washington, DC; 96,000 in Los Angeles; and 10,000 in New York)."
Der_Einzige 7y ago
This food looks delicious and I'd love to try some. It seems that they haven't "Americanized" it as much as many other ethnic restaurants - though I haven't had real Ethopian food so I don't actually know that for sure. I wish that Americans would stop paying for shitty versions of other cultures foods. I live in a huge city with lots of people of a certain south-east Asian ethnic group. I am also married to a south-east Asian of said ethnic group. We have tried every one of the available restaurants and not a single one of them comes even close to properly approximating the food available in her home country (according to her). In her opinion, this isn't just because of a lack of available ingredients. It is because Americans don't want authentic food. Fix your shit America because we will forever be (along with the UK) the laughing stock of the culinary world with these practices.
- kyleee 7y ago
  Which ethnic group/cuisine are you referring to?
- anw 7y ago
  Haha, I completely agree, but also understand why it happens. There is a documentary called "The Search for General Tso" on Netflix (I believe) that talks about how a staple American dish in Chinese restaurants came to be. In particular, nearly everybody says, "we had to change this and add sugar, as Americans have a sweeter palette than Chinese have". However, the same thing happens in Asia with other countrys' foods, which can sometimes be good (Shaka Shaka Chicken, Japanese Curry) or perplexing (Cheeseburger Pizza). Having grown up around a lot of Asian and Asian Americans, I do wish the majority of Americans were more open to different cultural foods. There are so many good dishes from all over the world, that it just seems a shame to miss out on. I can't imagine life without Shengjian bao, xiaolung bao, green onion pancakes, or the host of noodle dishes. By the way, you didn't mention in particular, but I am guessing the huge South-East Asian ethnic group is Hmong? In which case I'm sure you've tried sweet pork (nqaj qaab zib). If you haven't, or if I'm wrong about which group you're talking about, try it anyway. It's delicious!
- arkis22 7y ago
  I hope it's not Thai. That'd be very ironic. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-rea...
anw 7y ago
Living in Los Angeles, we are fortunate to have a Little Ethiopia with plenty of restaurants baking delicious dishes. It's been a good opportunity to bring in friends from out of town to try "exotic" food and let them see that unfamiliar food to them can also be completely delicious, and even become a new favorite dish. Note: If you have not tried Ethiopian food, check out Yebeg Alecha (Lamb Stew), along with the combination vegetable dishes that come with Injera (a thin, spongy bread that you can tear and use as a pocket for the vegetables).
clairity 7y ago
angelenos, and visitors to LA, should check out awash[0] in mid-city, near (but not in) the ethiopian district on fairfax. it's an absolute hole-in-the-wall with warm but wonderfully slow service (expect to wait 45 minutes to get served after ordering). you're expected to relax and chat with friends, unlike korean bbq restaurtants that try to turn your table over as fast as possible (that's why they cook the meat for you even at the table grill). get the vege combo (pictured in the link below) and the awaze tibbs (or the meat combo, which includes it). it's fabulous and very reasonably priced. [0] #1 on this list: https://la.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-los-angeless-little-ethiopia-fairfax https://la.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-los-angeless-litt...
- anw 7y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation! I haven't been to Awash, usually checking out the restaurants in that one block area on Fairfax (and usually Lalibela, at that). It's nice to see something new when you thought you tried them all :)
  - clairity 7y ago
    you're welcome! it's hard to go wrong picking at random on fairfax--they're all pretty good. but awash has been my favorite for many years now, so i'm happy to send them more business (when it can open again) even at the risk of getting crowded out sometimes.
- tootie 7y ago
  There's a restaurant called Awash on Court St in Brooklyn that's also delicious. Slightly more modern style but still terrific food and very chill. Ghenet on 4th Ave is probably my favorite though. Also, you can't talk about Ethiopian cuisine without mentioning that they were the first culture to drink coffee.
  - clairity 7y ago
    neat! i think i went to a place once in DC or thereabouts that was also called awash. and yes, ethiopian coffee is good and the beans from that region are among the best in the world.
modsWork4appl 7y ago
Is beef and chicken really available in quantities and prices deemed "affordable" in Ethiopia? Beef seems like a luxury good here. Chicken may not be quite luxury, but it's more expensive than vegetarian.
- ueudrjjj 7y ago
  It's probably more available in the US than in Ethiopia but it's still a part of the cuisine. Interestingly, according to the guy who runs my local place, mushrooms are also found in Ethiopian cooking but are often left off the menus because (his words not mine) "white people don't think mushrooms are authentic".
- backprojection 7y ago
  It’s relatively expensive, depends on your income level. Chicken beef and goat are common. Folks in the country have better access than in the cities.
  - leeman2016 7y ago
    Plus, people follow strict fasting (up to 210 mandatory fasting days in a year) ... at least the Oriental Orthodox church followers which make up 40-50% of the population.
- ilstormcloud 7y ago
  I live in Ethiopia. This country has the highest number of livestock in all of Africa. So it's available in quantities. The price for a kilo can range between 7$ to 20$ (if you go to specialized places). The price hikes was driven by high inflation driven by some economic growth. So meat is moderately expensive but it's a regular menu item at least in the section of society i interact most with. As a comparison, It was 3$ a kilo, markedly cheaper.
supernova87a 7y ago
I hate to say it, but I was never a big fan of Ethiopian food, even well before the virus situation. All my friends reaching in, grabbing, and getting their fingers in the communal bread/stew was a real turnoff. Flavors were not that different from other spicy types of food, and it really was the fingers-in-bowls thing that I could never get over. ps. I know there are ways of individually serving it.
- titanomachy 7y ago
  The restaurants that I've been to had serving spoons, I guess as a compromise to Western norms. The flavours were subtly different from other things I've tried.
- starpilot 7y ago
  Yet you let your dog lick your mouth. Why is this?
  - roel_v 7y ago
    Who lets their dog lick their mouth? That's absolutely filthy.
    - chris1993 7y ago
      I have friends who believe that dog saliva is very healthy and helps your immune system, and they encourage dogs to lick their faces. Given what I''ve seen my dog eating and licking I do my very best to avoid her spittle.
      - starpilot 7y ago
        Are you fucking serious? I was semi-joking with my comment (wypipo thing), but dog licks can cause life-threatening illness: https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/health/amputation-dog-lick-ohio-woman/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/health/amputation-dog-lick-oh...
starpilot 7y ago
Best places in Seattle: Cafe Ibex and Cafe Selam. For beginners, veggie combo is always good. More advanced: Kitfo, which is Ethiopian steak tartare (raw or rare).
cmrdporcupine 7y ago
I still remember the time I -- a Torontonian who has eaten extensively at the many Ethopian restaurants in town -- visited Munich with my wife and went to an Ethopian restaurant there, and found many of the local Germans eating with a knife and fork instead their hands. Maybe this was just that night or just this one restaurant, but it kinda shocked me.
- anyfoo 7y ago
  I'm from Munich. "Table manners" are a bigger deal when bringen children up in Germany, I think, to the point where it's hard at first to put them aside (even though they are just a local custom, in the end). When I moved to the US, I was a bit confused at first that people did not follow the same table manners even when they were using fork and knife. Sometimes they cut food first and then only used the fork. Often they would leave the other arm below the table, which I have been taught not to. It is perfectly normal to not to finish your plate in the US. I've got over it, and do the local way now. I do not notice whether I or someone else leave their arm hanging. I especially enjoy the ability to not finish my plate and take leftovers home instead (which is possible in Germany, but the instinct of finishing, sometimes forcibly, your plate made it less common). Customs are just customs.
  - cmrdporcupine 7y ago
    I should have mentioned, my father is German (from Mainz originally) and table manners were ... important ... around our dinner table. The experience at the Ethiopian restaurant certainly wasn't my first experience with the differences in German attitudes about dining. Eating with my father or my Oma and Opa was quite markedly different from eating with my Canadian farmer grandfather :-) But leaving food on the plate wasn't acceptable in my house not because my father was German, but from my mother, too, because they grew up (or parents grew up) in a time when there often wasn't enough to go around and wasting food was a ridiculous and rude indulgence. About the knife and fork thing, I believe that might partially be the difference between continental and Anglo-American style of handling the fork. [1] [1] https://theetiquetteconsultant.com/blog/2018/1/26/styles-of-eating-american-continental-european-british-which-is-correct https://theetiquetteconsultant.com/blog/2018/1/26/styles-of-...
watersb 7y ago
My favorite cuisine. Walk down Telegraph Avenue, from Berkeley to Lake Merritt, you will find a number of great Ethiopian-style restaurants. My favorite has long been the Blue Nile, which over the years has migrated south, now near the west end of Lake Merritt.
- dllthomas 7y ago
  My favorite in the area is Enssaro.
Stratoscope 7y ago
Oh, this makes me miss Zeni in San Jose. It's the best Ethiopian food I've had in this area. Must visit when they are open again! (I guess they have takeout, but I live some distance away.) I saw one comment here from someone who dislikes the "eat with your hands and scoop up the food with injera" style of Ethiopian dining. Zeni has both options: a traditional Ethiopian dining room and a western-style room with regular tables and chairs. They are very nice people, and I hope their business survives the current crisis. In the meantime, I will have to content myself with our home-roasted Ethiopian coffee. I love those fruity dry process beans. Yum!
- 7thaccount 7y ago
  Their coffee is second to none. I only drink Ethiopian coffee when possible. Amazing flavor.
  - _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
    Not only the flavour: I find that a lot of coffees make me feel slightly ill after drinking, but not with Ethiopian beans.
- AareyBaba 7y ago
  Selam Restaurant in San Jose is where the Ethiopian Uber drivers hang out on breaks. The food is delicious, the injera bread is less sour than other places.
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    Looks great, thanks! I see a couple of trips to San Jose in my (hopefully) immediate future.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago
  Zeni is delicious.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  They’re quite popular, too: last time we visited they had an hour wait to be seated.
somberi 7y ago
NYC has its share of good Ethiopian restaurants. My favorite for the past 20 years has been Queen of Sheba on 10th Ave (47st). There is Meskerem at McDougal St. There is Awash, as well.
samatman 7y ago
Mama Desta's in Chicago was second-rate, though I'm still sad to hear they closed (I left in 2009). The hookup spot there is Ethiopian Diamond, the setting for some of my fondest memories of that city. The East Bay has many respectable options but none ever quite measured up. I should have skipped reading this before dinner; there's one Ethiopian restaurant in my entire state and air travel to the island which has it is sadly restricted. Great little slice of life article, only slightly marred by the author's feigned outrage that restaurant critics of the era referred to Desta Bairu as "Mamma Desta". Was it misogyny, in the era of Julia Child's celebrity, or the fact that the restaurant was called "Mamma Desta"? We may never know!
- Digit-Al 7y ago
  I didn't see anything in the article to suggest the author attributed it to anything as simple as misogyny. From the article: >Though Desta Bairu’s cooking drew plaudits, a number of traits beyond her control — her age, her race, her motherly mien — may have put her at a disadvantage. [edit: formatting]
  - samatman 7y ago
    I didn't see anything in the article to suggest the author attributed it to anything as simple as the restaurant being called "Mamma Desta", either. Which was mainly my point. There's also no indication whatsoever that Desta Bairu would have preferred to be called "Desta Bairu" in print, over the "Mamma Desta" that she and the owner chose as the name of the retaurant. That's just assumed, and used as a springboard for a collection of lukewarm tropes which I summarized as 'misogyny'. I thought that was more condescending than referring to her by her nom de kitchen.
freepor 7y ago
You know Ethiopian food is good because it's become popular without the "mother country" wielding any kind of economic influence/hard power/soft power.
selimthegrim 7y ago
Any Philadelphia recommendations? I remember one in the West 50s or so that had a bar called Fiume over it.
- TheAdamist 7y ago
  That's abyssinia. There's a couple clusters of Ethiopian restaurants in that general area. Baltimore Ave has several too. I don't have any personal recommendations.
susejesus 7y ago
Ethiopian food is probably underrated as the creators are African. It is actually superior to all of these combined: Chinese, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Greek and more
- saagarjha 7y ago
  …in your opinion, of course.

68 points by samclemens 7y ago

I love Ethiopian food, but it has never seemed mainstream to me. Claiming it’s part of the shared American palate is going to need a citation.

ummonk 7y ago
Yeah, I've eaten Ethiopian food and liked it, but unless I've been completely out of the loop, Ethiopian food is not "an American fascination".
- dang 7y ago
  Ok, we've taken fascination out of the title above.
starpilot 7y ago
Fake trends are the easiest hooks for clickbait these days, fueled by FOMO.
jowiar 7y ago
Within the US, of the cities I've lived in (NYC, DC, Philly, Pittsburgh, Chicago, SF), it's thoroughly mainstream in DC, and that's it. In NYC, Ethiopian Food is something I can get if I want it. In DC, everyone I knew ate Ethiopian food semi-regularly and many have their favorite hole in the wall that nobody else had been to. At least per https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/beyond-regional-circularity-emergence-ethiopian-diaspora/ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/beyond-regional-circ... -- the location of Ethiopian-Americans is: "If the descendants of Ethiopian-born migrants (the second generation and up) are included, the estimates range upwards of 460,000 in the United States (of which approximately 350,000 are in Washington, DC; 96,000 in Los Angeles; and 10,000 in New York)."

Der_Einzige 7y ago

This food looks delicious and I'd love to try some. It seems that they haven't "Americanized" it as much as many other ethnic restaurants - though I haven't had real Ethopian food so I don't actually know that for sure. I wish that Americans would stop paying for shitty versions of other cultures foods. I live in a huge city with lots of people of a certain south-east Asian ethnic group. I am also married to a south-east Asian of said ethnic group. We have tried every one of the available restaurants and not a single one of them comes even close to properly approximating the food available in her home country (according to her). In her opinion, this isn't just because of a lack of available ingredients. It is because Americans don't want authentic food. Fix your shit America because we will forever be (along with the UK) the laughing stock of the culinary world with these practices.

kyleee 7y ago
Which ethnic group/cuisine are you referring to?
anw 7y ago
Haha, I completely agree, but also understand why it happens. There is a documentary called "The Search for General Tso" on Netflix (I believe) that talks about how a staple American dish in Chinese restaurants came to be. In particular, nearly everybody says, "we had to change this and add sugar, as Americans have a sweeter palette than Chinese have". However, the same thing happens in Asia with other countrys' foods, which can sometimes be good (Shaka Shaka Chicken, Japanese Curry) or perplexing (Cheeseburger Pizza). Having grown up around a lot of Asian and Asian Americans, I do wish the majority of Americans were more open to different cultural foods. There are so many good dishes from all over the world, that it just seems a shame to miss out on. I can't imagine life without Shengjian bao, xiaolung bao, green onion pancakes, or the host of noodle dishes. By the way, you didn't mention in particular, but I am guessing the huge South-East Asian ethnic group is Hmong? In which case I'm sure you've tried sweet pork (nqaj qaab zib). If you haven't, or if I'm wrong about which group you're talking about, try it anyway. It's delicious!
arkis22 7y ago
I hope it's not Thai. That'd be very ironic. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-rea...

anw 7y ago

Living in Los Angeles, we are fortunate to have a Little Ethiopia with plenty of restaurants baking delicious dishes. It's been a good opportunity to bring in friends from out of town to try "exotic" food and let them see that unfamiliar food to them can also be completely delicious, and even become a new favorite dish. Note: If you have not tried Ethiopian food, check out Yebeg Alecha (Lamb Stew), along with the combination vegetable dishes that come with Injera (a thin, spongy bread that you can tear and use as a pocket for the vegetables).

clairity 7y ago

angelenos, and visitors to LA, should check out awash[0] in mid-city, near (but not in) the ethiopian district on fairfax. it's an absolute hole-in-the-wall with warm but wonderfully slow service (expect to wait 45 minutes to get served after ordering). you're expected to relax and chat with friends, unlike korean bbq restaurtants that try to turn your table over as fast as possible (that's why they cook the meat for you even at the table grill). get the vege combo (pictured in the link below) and the awaze tibbs (or the meat combo, which includes it). it's fabulous and very reasonably priced. [0] #1 on this list: https://la.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-los-angeless-little-ethiopia-fairfax https://la.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-los-angeless-litt...

anw 7y ago
Thanks for the recommendation! I haven't been to Awash, usually checking out the restaurants in that one block area on Fairfax (and usually Lalibela, at that). It's nice to see something new when you thought you tried them all :)
- clairity 7y ago
  you're welcome! it's hard to go wrong picking at random on fairfax--they're all pretty good. but awash has been my favorite for many years now, so i'm happy to send them more business (when it can open again) even at the risk of getting crowded out sometimes.
tootie 7y ago
There's a restaurant called Awash on Court St in Brooklyn that's also delicious. Slightly more modern style but still terrific food and very chill. Ghenet on 4th Ave is probably my favorite though. Also, you can't talk about Ethiopian cuisine without mentioning that they were the first culture to drink coffee.
- clairity 7y ago
  neat! i think i went to a place once in DC or thereabouts that was also called awash. and yes, ethiopian coffee is good and the beans from that region are among the best in the world.

modsWork4appl 7y ago

Is beef and chicken really available in quantities and prices deemed "affordable" in Ethiopia? Beef seems like a luxury good here. Chicken may not be quite luxury, but it's more expensive than vegetarian.

ueudrjjj 7y ago
It's probably more available in the US than in Ethiopia but it's still a part of the cuisine. Interestingly, according to the guy who runs my local place, mushrooms are also found in Ethiopian cooking but are often left off the menus because (his words not mine) "white people don't think mushrooms are authentic".
backprojection 7y ago
It’s relatively expensive, depends on your income level. Chicken beef and goat are common. Folks in the country have better access than in the cities.
- leeman2016 7y ago
  Plus, people follow strict fasting (up to 210 mandatory fasting days in a year) ... at least the Oriental Orthodox church followers which make up 40-50% of the population.
ilstormcloud 7y ago
I live in Ethiopia. This country has the highest number of livestock in all of Africa. So it's available in quantities. The price for a kilo can range between 7$ to 20$ (if you go to specialized places). The price hikes was driven by high inflation driven by some economic growth. So meat is moderately expensive but it's a regular menu item at least in the section of society i interact most with. As a comparison, It was 3$ a kilo, markedly cheaper.

supernova87a 7y ago

I hate to say it, but I was never a big fan of Ethiopian food, even well before the virus situation. All my friends reaching in, grabbing, and getting their fingers in the communal bread/stew was a real turnoff. Flavors were not that different from other spicy types of food, and it really was the fingers-in-bowls thing that I could never get over. ps. I know there are ways of individually serving it.

titanomachy 7y ago
The restaurants that I've been to had serving spoons, I guess as a compromise to Western norms. The flavours were subtly different from other things I've tried.
starpilot 7y ago
Yet you let your dog lick your mouth. Why is this?
- roel_v 7y ago
  Who lets their dog lick their mouth? That's absolutely filthy.
  - chris1993 7y ago
    I have friends who believe that dog saliva is very healthy and helps your immune system, and they encourage dogs to lick their faces. Given what I''ve seen my dog eating and licking I do my very best to avoid her spittle.
    - starpilot 7y ago
      Are you fucking serious? I was semi-joking with my comment (wypipo thing), but dog licks can cause life-threatening illness: https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/health/amputation-dog-lick-ohio-woman/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/02/health/amputation-dog-lick-oh...

starpilot 7y ago

Best places in Seattle: Cafe Ibex and Cafe Selam. For beginners, veggie combo is always good. More advanced: Kitfo, which is Ethiopian steak tartare (raw or rare).

cmrdporcupine 7y ago

I still remember the time I -- a Torontonian who has eaten extensively at the many Ethopian restaurants in town -- visited Munich with my wife and went to an Ethopian restaurant there, and found many of the local Germans eating with a knife and fork instead their hands. Maybe this was just that night or just this one restaurant, but it kinda shocked me.

anyfoo 7y ago
I'm from Munich. "Table manners" are a bigger deal when bringen children up in Germany, I think, to the point where it's hard at first to put them aside (even though they are just a local custom, in the end). When I moved to the US, I was a bit confused at first that people did not follow the same table manners even when they were using fork and knife. Sometimes they cut food first and then only used the fork. Often they would leave the other arm below the table, which I have been taught not to. It is perfectly normal to not to finish your plate in the US. I've got over it, and do the local way now. I do not notice whether I or someone else leave their arm hanging. I especially enjoy the ability to not finish my plate and take leftovers home instead (which is possible in Germany, but the instinct of finishing, sometimes forcibly, your plate made it less common). Customs are just customs.
- cmrdporcupine 7y ago
  I should have mentioned, my father is German (from Mainz originally) and table manners were ... important ... around our dinner table. The experience at the Ethiopian restaurant certainly wasn't my first experience with the differences in German attitudes about dining. Eating with my father or my Oma and Opa was quite markedly different from eating with my Canadian farmer grandfather :-) But leaving food on the plate wasn't acceptable in my house not because my father was German, but from my mother, too, because they grew up (or parents grew up) in a time when there often wasn't enough to go around and wasting food was a ridiculous and rude indulgence. About the knife and fork thing, I believe that might partially be the difference between continental and Anglo-American style of handling the fork. [1] [1] https://theetiquetteconsultant.com/blog/2018/1/26/styles-of-eating-american-continental-european-british-which-is-correct https://theetiquetteconsultant.com/blog/2018/1/26/styles-of-...

watersb 7y ago

My favorite cuisine. Walk down Telegraph Avenue, from Berkeley to Lake Merritt, you will find a number of great Ethiopian-style restaurants. My favorite has long been the Blue Nile, which over the years has migrated south, now near the west end of Lake Merritt.

dllthomas 7y ago
My favorite in the area is Enssaro.

Stratoscope 7y ago

Oh, this makes me miss Zeni in San Jose. It's the best Ethiopian food I've had in this area. Must visit when they are open again! (I guess they have takeout, but I live some distance away.) I saw one comment here from someone who dislikes the "eat with your hands and scoop up the food with injera" style of Ethiopian dining. Zeni has both options: a traditional Ethiopian dining room and a western-style room with regular tables and chairs. They are very nice people, and I hope their business survives the current crisis. In the meantime, I will have to content myself with our home-roasted Ethiopian coffee. I love those fruity dry process beans. Yum!

7thaccount 7y ago
Their coffee is second to none. I only drink Ethiopian coffee when possible. Amazing flavor.
- _emacsomancer_ 7y ago
  Not only the flavour: I find that a lot of coffees make me feel slightly ill after drinking, but not with Ethiopian beans.
AareyBaba 7y ago
Selam Restaurant in San Jose is where the Ethiopian Uber drivers hang out on breaks. The food is delicious, the injera bread is less sour than other places.
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  Looks great, thanks! I see a couple of trips to San Jose in my (hopefully) immediate future.
thaumasiotes 7y ago
Zeni is delicious.
saagarjha 7y ago
They’re quite popular, too: last time we visited they had an hour wait to be seated.

somberi 7y ago

NYC has its share of good Ethiopian restaurants. My favorite for the past 20 years has been Queen of Sheba on 10th Ave (47st). There is Meskerem at McDougal St. There is Awash, as well.

samatman 7y ago

Mama Desta's in Chicago was second-rate, though I'm still sad to hear they closed (I left in 2009). The hookup spot there is Ethiopian Diamond, the setting for some of my fondest memories of that city. The East Bay has many respectable options but none ever quite measured up. I should have skipped reading this before dinner; there's one Ethiopian restaurant in my entire state and air travel to the island which has it is sadly restricted. Great little slice of life article, only slightly marred by the author's feigned outrage that restaurant critics of the era referred to Desta Bairu as "Mamma Desta". Was it misogyny, in the era of Julia Child's celebrity, or the fact that the restaurant was called "Mamma Desta"? We may never know!

Digit-Al 7y ago
I didn't see anything in the article to suggest the author attributed it to anything as simple as misogyny. From the article: >Though Desta Bairu’s cooking drew plaudits, a number of traits beyond her control — her age, her race, her motherly mien — may have put her at a disadvantage. [edit: formatting]
- samatman 7y ago
  I didn't see anything in the article to suggest the author attributed it to anything as simple as the restaurant being called "Mamma Desta", either. Which was mainly my point. There's also no indication whatsoever that Desta Bairu would have preferred to be called "Desta Bairu" in print, over the "Mamma Desta" that she and the owner chose as the name of the retaurant. That's just assumed, and used as a springboard for a collection of lukewarm tropes which I summarized as 'misogyny'. I thought that was more condescending than referring to her by her nom de kitchen.

freepor 7y ago

You know Ethiopian food is good because it's become popular without the "mother country" wielding any kind of economic influence/hard power/soft power.

selimthegrim 7y ago

Any Philadelphia recommendations? I remember one in the West 50s or so that had a bar called Fiume over it.

TheAdamist 7y ago
That's abyssinia. There's a couple clusters of Ethiopian restaurants in that general area. Baltimore Ave has several too. I don't have any personal recommendations.

susejesus 7y ago

Ethiopian food is probably underrated as the creators are African. It is actually superior to all of these combined: Chinese, Indian, Italian, Japanese, Greek and more

saagarjha 7y ago
…in your opinion, of course.