A Moveable Feast - In Search of an Ultimate Yebeg Tibs

Yebeg Tibs served on injera

Back on September 14, 2018, I posted a short essay on my discovery of two excellent Eritrean restaurants in Portland, Maine.  It is a foodie city for sure, yet I was still surprised to find these traditional eateries in Portland and to discover the growing Eritrean community in northern New England.  Now I have decided to return to my exploration of Ethiopian and Eritrean cultures and their traditional cuisines.  If you have never sampled them, I suspect you might upon the conclusion of my story. You are in for a treat.

I first encountered Ethiopian history, culture, and cuisine some 35 years ago in the Washington, DC area  where I have resided and worked since the mid 1970s.  A former colleague of mine had spent a few years with the Peace Corps in Ethiopia back in the 1960s when Emperor Haile Selassie still traveled by jeep to rural villages scattering coins of the realm to poverty stricken subjects.  Emperor Selassie had been overthrown in 1974 and murdered by a ruthless Marxist-Leninist coup .  The new communist regime in Ethiopia instituted policies that led to massive famine and genocide among minority ethnic communities throughout the country.  Following the coup a civil war broke out in the country pitting the new Ethiopian regime against the breakaway coastal province of Eritrea, and a massive refugee exodus from both regions began to flee their homelands.

Immigration legislation passed by the US Congress and the so-called “Diversity Visa Program” in the early 1980s contributed to increased emigration from Ethiopia to the United States as a result of the ongoing Ethiopian Civil War which ended in 1991 with the overthrow of the Marxist-Leninist regime by the coalition forces of the  Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front.  Additional Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants arrived in the United States throughout the 1990s as a result of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea which became an independent state in 1994 following a plebiscite the previous year.  Many of these new immigrants greatly enlarged the existing Ethiopian and Eritrean communities in Washington.   The Ethiopian Embassy estimates that upwards of a quarter of a million of Ethiopian descent presently reside in the Washington Metropolitan area, the largest Ethiopian population outside of the country itself.

 Many of these refugees, for one reason or another, ended up in the metropolitan Washington, DC area, primarily centered around the Adams Morgan neighborhood, and immigrant entrepreneurs began opening food establishments, bodegas, taxi companies and other small businesses through the region during the late 1970s.  As my interest in Ethiopian history and culture expanded, I discovered more books to read, most recently The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (2007) by Dinaw Mengestu. It tells the story of a young Ethiopian man who comes to DC during the diaspora to live and work and his introduction to life in his new American homeland. 

Washington abounds with a wide variety of eateries serving various traditional cuisines from around the world.  (Jonathan Gold, the food critic for the Los Angeles Times who recently passed away, was the first to prefer the term “traditional” over “ethnic” since these cuisines would hardly be considered ethnic among the cultures that created them.)  There are numerous Ethiopian restaurants, cafés and coffee bars of every size and description in Washington and its suburbs.  You can scarcely throw a large rock without hitting one, and everyone seems to have a special one they favor.

Early on my colleague and I preferred Lalibela, in a former row

house near Dupont Circle, and the Red Sea, on 18th Street, NW, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood which in the 1980s crowned itself “Little Ethiopia.”  I continued to frequent Lalibela while pursing my political economy studies at the nearby Institute for Policy Studies, and I remained a loyalist until it closed in the late 1980s.  

My sole allegiance soon passed to the Red Sea because it was where many local Ethiopian immigrants frequently gathered.  I figured the cuisine had to be authentic and good.  Rather spartan in its decor and furnishings, its variety of dishes from all regions of the country, including from what was then the breakaway province (and now the independent country) of Eritrea, were all excellent.  I favored the kitfo - very

lean raw ground beef mixed with niter kibbeh (clarified butter) and berbere (red chile mixed with cardamon) and mitmita spice and served with a dry cottage cheese on the side.  I frequently ordered the Eritrean dish zigni - beef cubes cooked in a rich tomato-based sauce flavored with berbere, cinnamon and cumin and garnished with hot peppers.  But our favorite offering was yebeg tibs - small and slightly charred cubes of lamb still tender and juicy in the middle served with chopped red onions and green pepper sautéed in niter kibbeh with berbere and other spices.  All of these wonderful dishes were, of course, washed down with imported Ethiopian beer.

A couple doors down the street from the Red Sea was Fasika which also had its own dedicated clientele.  And across the street was the Meskerem.  Opened in 1985, it was touted as the oldest Ethiopian restaurant in Washington, as well as America’s oldest Ethiopian restaurant operating at the same address.  It appeared more upscale than the Red Sea or Fasika and was, in my humble opinion, geared to non-Ethiopian afficionados and tourists; those who had little, if any, experience with the variety of Ethiopian cuisine.  Although there were at that time many traditional Ethiopian restaurants around town, and in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs, these three core restaurants in the Adams Morgan neighborhood anchored the “Little Ethiopia” colony in Washington in the 1980s and 1990s and offered many Washingtonians and visitors their first tastes of Ethiopian cooking with its variety of shiro (a stew made from chick peas and bean meal with onions, garlic, ginger, and chopped tomatoes); wat (a stew made from a mixtures of spices such as berbere blended with niter kibbeh, and prepared with chicken, beef, or lamb); and alicha (a mild stew of meat or vegetables made without berbere, but rather spiced with ginger or turmeric) served on injera (light) or sergegna injera (dark), a somewhat sour and spongy flatbread with teff (a gluten free grain) flour which is also torn in strips as a means of picking up food.  Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine is all about finger food.  

Unfortunately, civil war tensions were imported along with the refugees of the Ethiopian/Eritrean diaspora and these occasionally surfaced in one of the many traditional restaurants and cafes around Washington and one would occasionally read or hear about such incidents in the local new media.  I never witnessed any violence but I did observe some vociferous arguments more than likely arising from these political tensions or victories for one side or the other on a distant battlefield, especially in those restaurants like the Red Sea that served both traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean dishes.

In the late 1980s my office temporarily moved to the intersection of Connecticut and Florida Avenue, NW, and across the street from a then well-know Italian/Ethiopian restaurant (Ethiopia and Eritrea were both colonized as part of Italian East Africa).  In the basement was a small “Eritrean Café” – just a small bar and a very few tables.  Members of the local Ethiopian expat community would dine upstairs while the separatist Eritreans were only welcome in the café.  Both served from the same Italian menu, the one difference being that during the lunch hour the café downstairs would serve what it billed as “The Eritrean Special” which was nothing more than a generous portion of Zigni served with hot peppers over injera which had long been one of my favorite dishes a few blocks away at the Red Sea, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood..  I would frequently enjoy the Special when I did not have time to wander far from my office for lunch.  More often than not I was the only one there and I got to know the kind lady who worked there and always knew what I wanted when I walked in.

With this new influx of immigrants fleeing the civil war the universe of the Ethiopian community in Washington changed.  The Adams Morgan neighborhood and the 18th Street and Columbia Road, NW business corridors, the heart of the that community, experienced a gradual gentrification and many of the old establishments and traditional restaurants were replaced with upscale eateries, boutiques, galleries, bars and clubs.  A more hip and urbane diner sought out the area and the old places found it hard to compete.   More Ethiopian restaurants were opening around town and in the suburbs to draw in the expat and local afficionados.  With little warning the Red Sea, Fasika’s, and eventually Meskerem - the anchors of “Little Ethiopia” - were shuttered and out of business.   

Regulars had to search out new venues and counted themselves fortunate that there was plenty to choose from throughout the metropolitan area.  I first migrated down 18th Street to the Ababa, another modest joint favored by Ethiopian taxi drivers of which there are a great many in the area.  There was also the resurrected Lalibela in the revitalized 14th Street corridor.  All are good and I have enjoyed many meals at these and others traditional eateries.  The quality of their yebeg tibs remained the gold standard when rating a new or unfamiliar spot. 

Yet despite their diffusion throughout the region, it was clear that the nucleus of the so-called “Little Ethiopia” had shifted from Adams Morgan to the Shaw and Cardozo neighborhoods – an area once known as the “Black Broadway,” the cultural mecca of Washington’s established African American community – and the revitalized and hip U Street, NW business corridor.  This enclave now has twice as many Ethiopian restaurants as Adams Morgan.

I eventually migrated to Dukem, in the U Street corridor, because it had been around for quite awhile and it had a good reputation.  This one-time local take away bodega gradually developed into a first rate restaurant with the rise of fortunes along the U Street.  And their yebeg tibs and the kitfo are to die for.  That was good enough for me.  A nightclub featuring

traditional music followed and the place draws a big crowd in the evenings.  Dukem continues to operate a take away and grocery next door with a wide variety of special ingredients required during the fast period of the growing Ethiopian Orthodox community in Washington.  I love the kitfo sandwich, that delicious buttery raw beef served on a hoagie roll.  Not your traditional Ethiopian fare, but delightful just the same.

Whereas the Shaw and U Street neighborhood have claimed the title of Washington’s “Little Ethiopia,” and few will disagree that it has become the epicenter of Ethiopian culture and cuisine in the Nation’s Capitol, one cannot deny that there has been a second major local immigrant population shift, this time into both the Maryland  and the Northern Virginia suburbs.  Downtown Silver Spring, Maryland hosts at least a dozen fine Ethiopian restaurants and cafés.  For myself, a Marylander, as well as several of my fellow gourmands on the other side of the Potomac River, it is no longer necessary to commute into the city to enjoy genuine traditional Ethiopian/Eritrean fare.  In Virginia I have discovered Enat, a family-run Ethiopian

restaurant in the Lincolnia neighborhood on the west side of Alexandria.  Located in a small strip mall, it serves a wide variety of meat and vegetarian dishes.  I don’t get here often as it is quite a schlepp across town.  But the yebeg tibs and the kitfo meet the gold standard and I enjoy them here when I am in the neighborhood.

I am fortunate enough to have an excellent Ethiopian restaurant within five minutes of my home in the Maryland suburbs.  Shagga, in Riverdale Park, follows recipes that have been handed down for generations.   There is nothing fancy or ground breaking here.  Housed in a former Dunkin Donuts shop (which I also frequented in the day), it is honest to goodness Ethiopian cuisine at its finest and I probably eat here more often than any other traditional restaurant in the area.  I am drawn mainly to the fact that it is so close and it serves two distinct versions of yebeg tibs.  The regular version consists

of lean cubes pf lamb sautéed in onions, green peppers and herbed niter kibbeh.  The alternative version of yebeg tibs is fueled with the addition of tomatoes and herbed pepper awaze chile sauce.  Shagga also offers yebeg wat, a lamb stew simmered in berbere sauce along with onions, spices and niter kibbeh, and yebeg alicha which is lamb simmered in a mild herbed niter kibbeh sauce with onions, garlic and ginger.  And I never pass on the three versions of kitfo – the orthodox version as well as adaptations including homemade spiced cheeses or onion and jalapeños peppers.   They are all excellent.  To top it off, the folks who run Shagga are as friendly as they can be.   What more does one need?

Over three decades later I continue to enjoy Ethiopian cuisine with family and friends every chance I get.  And I will continue my quest for the ultimate yebeg tibs at every opportunity.  In fact, I am off to Shagga now to enjoy what just might fit that bill.

So many good Ethiopian/Eritrean restaurants . . . so little time!