That year, Bairu became the chef of Mamma Desta’s, the first Ethiopian restaurant in Washington, DC. “Others brought her into the spotlight,” says Harry Kloman, author of Mesob Across America: Ethiopian Food in the U.S.A. That distinction belonged to the bluntly named Ethiopian Restaurant, owned by one Beyene Guililat in Long Beach, California. Sileshi Alifom, who opened the Ethiopian restaurant Das in 2011 in Georgetown, recalls that it also became a democratic refuge for Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants. “But it was not as good as Mamma Desta’s.” If Mamma Desta’s looked like this, she thought, it would’ve been packed every night.

Source: Ethiopian News April 06, 2020 13:30 UTC