“Mamma Desta” and Ethiopian food in the U.S
vox.com
vox.com
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!
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!
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]
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.
it's fabulous and very reasonably priced.
[0] #1 on this list: https://la.eater.com/maps/best-restaurants-los-angeless-litt...
Also, you can't talk about Ethiopian cuisine without mentioning that they were the first culture to drink coffee.
and yes, ethiopian coffee is good and the beans from that region are among the best in the world.
Shout out to Azla[0] near DTLA. It is Vegan.
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).
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.
I don't have any personal recommendations.
At least per 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)."
Maybe this was just that night or just this one restaurant, but it kinda shocked me.
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.
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-...
This may be a "German thing"; I remember being a bit surprised when I ate lunch with a vendor from Germany and he ate a hamburger and french fries with a knife and fork.
Beef seems like a luxury good here. Chicken may not be quite luxury, but it's more expensive than vegetarian.
ps. I know there are ways of individually serving it.
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.
There's no such thing as "authentic" food. It doesn't exist and it never did.
Like, some Scottish establishments will deep fry a pizza. Who cares it's not an "authentic" Italian food? It's "authentic" Scottish food at this point. I also don't particularly care about Italians thinking it's an abomination - they are free to think that, but I wouldn't have a go at the Scots for doing it - if they like it, then whatever.
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!
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/paxadz/the-surprising-rea...
On the other hand, we both combined only know a handful of cuisines really well, so I can't tell if we're just lucky to have them match up.
Alpha cities and regional / global capitals certainly do, but your average Midwestern city seems to have much more variation than a random middle-sized European city from what experienced abroad (with the caveat that obviously individual European countries are much more different from each other than US states are).