Four Corners explores local markets selling hard-to-find ingredients from around the globe. Got an idea for a place we should check out? Tell us in the comments.
By DCist contributor Johanna Mendelson Forman
Habesha Market and Carry-Out (1919 9th Street NW) is located in the center of D.C.’s Little Ethiopia. It serves a dual purpose: grocery and supply-chain for Ethiopia’s unique, spicy cuisine and popular neighborhood restaurant that serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus catering if your plans are larger than just a tasting.
Yared Mamo, Habesha’s manager, said the market first opened as a restaurant in 2005. Since then it has expanded in size with added tables and a line of products from Ethiopia that include spice mixtures of berbere. “They are imported from Ethiopia and mixed according to family recipes,” said Mamo, who was reluctant to give details about the recipe.
But what seemed like one of the most popular items in the store was a front shelf that contained a wide variety of injera—the spongy, fermented crepe-like bread that is used as both utensil and base for the Ethiopian stews. There is even gluten-free injera, made entirely of tef, a grass-like grain that is the main source of flour in Ethiopia. This tef, however, comes from farms in Idaho. Ambasha is another type of circular yeast bread sold in the market. It is topped with butter once out of the oven and often accompanies breakfast dishes of eggs and the traditional foul, or bean stew, as a popular breakfast food in North Africa.
The market shelves are lined with plastic containers that are filled with colorful beans and lentils, jars of ready-made sauces, and other types of spices that give this ethnic cuisine its hot and spicy quality. All of these products are prepared in-house as they do not contain brand labels. There is also a section of Ethiopian CDs featuring the latest jazz and popular music artist, and phone cards for calling Ethiopia.
Coffee is always available at the counter brewed with the wonderful Arabic bean imported from Ethiopia. After all, Ethiopia was the birthplace of coffee. Small bags of a very typical Ethiopian snack food, kolo, a mixture of toasted barley and peanuts, are also for sale near the cash register. If you want a latte or cappuccino an espresso machine awaits an order. Don’t forget that Ethiopia was colonized by Italians until the Second World War. Coffee culture is well integrated into the cuisine, and the prices for an excellent brew make it worth a stop on a stroll up 9th Street NW.
But Habesha is more than a market. Washington, D.C. is unique as a city that boasts the largest Ethiopian diaspora outside of Addis Ababa. With more than 250,000 Ethiopians who have come to our town, many after the 1989 civil war, it is understandable that a Habesha thrives. In August 2012 President Obama paid a visit to Habesha, something that made the news on Ethiopian TV News. Today the market caters to D.C.’s cab drivers and garage attendants, many of them from Ethiopia. Manager Mamo confirmed that “90 percent of the business comes from them.” Sadly, he added that “Ethiopians who first settled in this part of D.C. have been pushed out to the suburbs as residential real estate prices have sky-rocketed.”
Here they can find a taste of home at a very reasonable price. Service is fast, it is no-frills (you receive a beeper that goes off when your order is ready), and the variety of dishes offer both vegetarian stews, traditional mixtures of ground beef, and the ever-popular, tibbs, chucks of meat simmered in sauces heavy with berbere or lamb mixed with collard greens. The brisk business is a guarantee that the food is fresh, convenient, and if you want there are Styrofoam containers for a quick carry-out meal.
Whether you want to try your hand at preparing Ethiopian cuisine or just want to take in the aroma of the stews and injera, Habesha will please both the palate and the pocket-book. For those who want to learn more about Ethiopian foods and cuisine, there is a wonderful blog that describes foods, customs and history, Mesob Across America by Harry Kloman. The monthly entries are an excellent introduction to the complexities of this ancient cuisine.
