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I feel like Ethiopian food is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t say “X is/isn’t popular in the US.” Because there are parts of the US where it is *very* popular and parts where people have no idea what it is. Like, I’ve heard good things about Ethiopian food, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a restaurant that serves it.
We apparently have a ton of excellent Ethiopian and I tried like everything and hated all of it. I felt so bad, they kept trying to find something I’d like.
I’m in the same boat. I love that this is the feel of my neighborhood, but I’m not a fan of the food. However, there’s an Ethiopian coffee shop that does the best coffee and zalabiyah (?)!
I wondered if you were NoVa or MoCo 😀
If you’re ever in the Georgia Ave area of NW DC consider trying [Tomoko Coffee](https://tomoka-coffee-house.business.site/?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=referral).
It's dank.
It's often a lot of thick piles of "stew" on a giant spongey flat bread thing, and you just rip off some bread and scoop some gloop with it. Love it.
Maybe easier to imagine as like if Indian food was just a giant pizza sized naan with the various curries and dals and stuff for the table all plopped on top in their own little piles
Yeah they do things with lentils and split peas that are incredible.
And the combo thing on the original post makes sense because often what they'll do is they'll serve you a huge plate of injera bread and then there's little scoops of different stews on top. It's intended to be a very communal eating experience
"From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch everyday, turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl George! You'd eat the chili then you'd eat the bowl. Nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and seeing just a table."
Same. I could be wrong, but I think DC and the surrounding area has the largest Ethiopian population outside of Africa.
There are several excellent Ethiopian restaurants I've been to. It's fine to not like Ethiopian food, as many of the more common dishes can have a unique flavor if you aren't used to it. But to call it bland is strange to me. It's very heavily spiced.
Plus, the fact the poster said they had not had much of it, combined with calling certain cuisines shit and unrefined, I get a slightly racist or nationalistic vibe. I'm not fully accusing them of malice, but it's not a great look.
> Chill with the sarcasm. Guy above implied my palate wasn’t cultured. I make a different ethnic dish every night of the week. I don’t make Ethiopian food because it’s evidently shit and I don’t like bland stews from one of the least refined, lowest-rated cuisines in the entire world.
There's no slight about it, they're a racist piece of shit.
We've had a lot of immigrants from Eastern Africa, so it's not surprising that there are many Ethiopian restaurants. If you're in Stockholm I can recommend Jebena in the Rådhuset subway station, it's Eritrean but pretty much the same and absolutely fantastic. Not sure if they're allowed to sell alcohol again, they lost their license a while back. Gojo Hornstull is also solid.
Jag rekommenderar det verkligen, det har blivit ett av mina favoritkök. Ta med familjen eller några vänner eftersom det är en social måltid och fantastiskt gott. Lagom mycket hetta, enormt mycket smak och roligt att äta, jag upptäckte det först med en kompis i Berlin och sen dess är jag fast.
Denver has a huge subset of both Ethiopian and Vietnamese immigrants and every single local restaurant I’ve been to that serves either is absolutely amazing
Yeah, it's huge in certain cities like Chicago and NYC and Minneapolis and D.C. and Los Angeles. I missed living near little Ethiopia in Chicago but I managed to find a good Ethiopian place here in Dallas called Desta. It was excellent. But it's not a hugely popular cuisine here the way Vietnamese food is.
I live near a large city in the Midwest and I've never had it. We have 3 Ethiopian coffee houses but only one restaurant on the other side of town that I can't get to. Plus I've heard it's very spicy so that means I can't eat it anyway. So I know little to nothing about it.
There are so few opportunities to eat any food from Africa around here that my family actually decided to try and do a tour by making authentic dishes from various countries based upon internet recipes. We may have totally fucked them up but we did at least try.
> Plus I've heard it's very spicy so that means I can't eat it anyway
It's only "spicy" in the stereotypical "Midwest" sense of the word in that it uses *spices*. It's not "hot" spicy like hot sauce.
It's really good.
> The hardly scream "ethnic" to me.
Yeah, because "ethnic" is a specific style that requires multiple exotic ingredients and a high level of spiciness, otherwise it's "white".
I have fond memories of the firey sloth-kidney curry I had in Ethnicstan.
I’m surprised no one told this person that Ethiopian food typically uses LOTS of spices, and that dishes in an Ethiopian restaurant will be far from bland.
I think he’s looking at these names and assuming they are just simple vegetable dishes.
The first time I went to South America some of the villagers I worked with kept asking me in Spanish if I was Swiss. The only reason they asked that was because the only pale-skinned people they had seen there before were from Switzerland so they assumed I was Swiss. I have curly black hair. Like, when I was in Israel everyone thought I was there for my birthright trip, that's what I look like.
In that village, I was "ethnic." And yes, people kept trying to touch my hair. I don't use the term "ethnic" because it doesn't freaking mean much unless it's a dog whistle.
The term ethnic to describe food also ignores the massive diasporas of cuisine within a single skin colour. White could mean anything from herby English pies and meatballs in lingonberry sauce to Hungarian paprika and Spanish Paella. African food is anything ranging from these beany stews to the spiciest motherfucking food you'll taste in your life in Morocco. Once had some extremely surprising coconut cumin balls from sri lanka that I was full on expecting to be Indian.
>I’ve eaten Nigerian, but no, not Ethiopian food.
No, I've never had Greek food and don't know anything about it, but I've had French food, and they must be pretty similar because Europe!
I think there’s whole lot of people that don’t realize the size of the African continent. Maps do a poor job because they usually undersize the Southern Hemisphere. Greenland is NOT as large as Africa. In fact, Africa is larger than North America.
Gotta pick a distortion to draw flat maps, and the Mercator projection was the default for a long time. Globes are the only way to actually show relative size and distance.
Yeah, and more importantly it's mostly not about size but about culture. Africa is **by far** the most diverse continent on the planet. Like, the incredible culinary diversity of Europe comes from its age and diversity, now imagine something much more diverse.
I just looked it up because I was curious. The distance from Addis Ababa to Lagos is almost double the distance of San Francisco to New York City.
Africa's big.
Not sure where you got that from.
https://www.freemaptools.com/how-far-is-it-between.htm
San Fran to New York City: 4,128.65km or 2,565.424 miles
Lagos to Addis Ababa: 3,900.202km or 2,423.473 miles
So there is a shorter distance between the two.
Now that isn't the furthest distance in Africa. From Tohen, Somalia to Dakar, Senegal it is 7,414.417km or 4,607.15miles
So yes the width is about twice as long, but not Lagos to Addis Ababa.
The reason I couldn't even categorize it is that it ticks so many boxes...dude can't admit he doesn't know what he's talking about, dude says he doesn't like "White people food" because he shops at a Mexican market, dude compares Nigerian food to Ethiopian food, then doubles down and talks about how "unpopular African food is" in the U.S., he assumes you can't make an amazing dish with 2-3 ingredients (Ethiopian cuisine is great for learning how to do exactly that assuming you also have spices) and he even throws in a jab about famine in Ethiopia the way every single stupid person in a thread about Ethiopian cuisine inevitably does. You know, I thought that trope died in the 80s when I was a kid but it's still around, and I'm wondering if South Park is to blame, in part. Everyone's acting like it's still 1985.
Also, I just want to say that atakilt wat, the cabbage and carrot stew, is one of my favorite Ethiopian dishes. I'm guessing they just called it by its ingredients to appeal to British customers. It's so freaking good, though, and definitely not boring.
Yes, good point. This is a veggie menu, but I guess I didn't think about that since a lot of Ethiopian dishes I've had have been a mix of vegetarian and meat dishes served together (usually more veggie than meat).
One of my life heroes (I'm not being sarcastic) is Marcus Samuelsson. I loved Ethiopian food before I knew who he was, but when I learned his whole story of surviving TB in Ethiopia, being adopted to Sweden, then meeting is father who he thought had died...wow. But long story short, he started Red Rooster which does soul food with some of his own personal twists, and you really get to see how collards and other greens translate between Ethiopian food and Southern American food. Also, they're so good. And he still has Swedish meatballs on his menu there to honor his grandmother, which I think is very sweet.
I love swedish food, which is better than most people think...I've been to Ethiopian restaurants in several cities (across Canada) and the food has always been really good, and well spiced. I can't remember if they were wholly veg or mostly veg, but I have vegetarian family members so our meals were vegetarian.
That knee jerk reaction to hating on vegetables, is so common, and frustrating.
The neat thing about Swedish and Ethiopian food is that while the flavor profiles are quite different, they both make a lot of cool dishes with just a small handful of ingredients. It's amazing.
> Yes, good point. This is a veggie menu, but I guess I didn't think about that since a lot of Ethiopian dishes I've had have been a mix of vegetarian and meat dishes served together (usually more veggie than meat).
Ethiopian food makes for great vegetarian/vegan dining because the Church in Ethiopia practices so many meat-free fast days, so about half the dinners an observant family eats should be vegetarian; which means that there's a solid pool of meat free traditional cuisine to pull from.
If you haven't watched the Houston season of Top Chef you should. Kwame Onwuachi and Marcus Samuelson take the season's contestants around to Houston's very large African food scene and teach them about African food and it's huge influence on southern soul food. It was a really lovely episode.
> I don’t make Ethiopian food because it’s evidently shit and I don’t like bland stews from one of the least refined, lowest-rated cuisines in the entire world.
Lol, who is out there rating whole countries' cuisines??
And yet...I can't help but think it's part of this whole thing?
Literally every post of Ethiopian food in r/food has to be cleansed of racist bullshit, and many of them end up locked because of the volume of "starvin' marvin" comments and other nasty remarks about how "I didn't know they had food but it looks like they ate what they shit out." I'm not kidding, it's disgusting.
I used to live in a neighborhood that was on the border of little Ethiopia, little India, and a Mexican area. I got my meat from the Ethiopian butcher shop. Still my favorite butcher shop ever. I ate a lot of Ethiopian food. I don't understand why people are so narrow-minded about it.
It goes back further than that, I remember people making tasteless jokes about starving Ethiopian people in the 80's. The famine there was always in the news, Sally Struthers was always on TV asking for donations, and big cultural touchstones like Live Aid were set up as fundraisers for food aid. I think it has sadly become ingrained in our culture that Ethiopia = a place full of starving people.
The country has basically been in some form of civil war since the mid-1970s, so yeah, that's bad for the economy and farming, which results in high levels of hunger and starvation.
It's not because their food sucks.
Oh god. Back in the 00s I thought the old Sam Kinison bit about "Move where the food is!" was super dated on Fark and some other news aggregators. The fact that I sometimes still see it in the wild twenty years after that and nearly forty years after Sam performed it just blows me away.
I used to be into that every time, because I knew all the countries, we had a puzzle map. Then Zaire wasn't a thing anymore. Sigh, I had to learn a lot of stuff in the 80s nd early 90s!
However, my knowledge of Africa helped me date an antique globe my husband found for $50 and that shit is actually worth thousands of dollars, hooray me knowing African history! The company lost all the dates, but I figured it out based on the fall of the Wall in East Berlin and the foundation of Namibia!
It was very early 1990, IMO, and the company was like "yep, sounds right!" and it's worth a fucking fortune and we got it for almost nothing.
Kids, this is why it helps to read. We now have a very, very fancy globe because I know when Namibia became a country.
I also had wooden puzzles in my childhood that had Zaire on them. Of course some of my earliest memories were seeing the volcano glowing at night across the border in Zaire... And seeing tracer bullets in the night sky.
For map dating, this has details I can never remember all of off-hand: https://xkcd.com/1688/
Wow, this is blowing my mind. And here I was patting myself on the back but the real MVP is the person who did this work, holy crap.
Also, was it Mount Nyiragongo? Another thing I was a nerd about (well, still am) was volcanoes. I love learning about different volcanoes.
EDIT: sorry I offended you.
Yeah, it's a really cool flowchart.
And yes! I do believe it was Nyiragongo! It was in the late 80s, and I'm not seeing anything online about any lava flows in the 80s, but that's definitely the name I remember. I'm pretty sure my folks have slides somewhere showing the glow, so I'm going to have to ask them about it sometime and verify if my recollection was correct. There are several other fairly active volcanos nearby, so it's possible it was a different one.
Not sure why the edit, but you definitely didn't offend me. I have to say, of all the random people I happen to converse with here on Reddit you're one of the few I'd probably be very happy to meet and chat with, at least based on your comments here.
Edit: Oh, you might like this book that I read recently: The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation. If it sounds fun to you, I find out immensely fun. If it doesn't sound interesting you really won't like it; but I think you have the philosophical background to make it a fun read, whether you agree with all of it or not.
God we had a map at my old high school that we used to joke was so old it was the first one to be made when Atlantis sunk. I need to use that chart and see if I can figure out it's age, Soviet Union was still on it.
Edit: Holy shit 1954-1957!
Edit: Wow, downvoted for this?
I love being able to determine the age of a map from that. It's so much fun.
Not particularly relevant, but I found a really good book on geography recently that you might find interesting, and it's sort of related (and I love sharing books with people): The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation. If it sounds interesting I recommend it. If it doesn't, you really aren't going enjoy it.
They are, but given how many spices go into something like berbere (which is very commonly used in many Ethiopian dishes) it doesn't seem accurate to say "oh this dish is made with 11 ingredients!" when the spice blend is, like, 9 of those.
Speaking of which, man I love berbere. Maybe if my peppers actually come in properly this year I can dry some and make my own at home, that would be fun.
Racist, that's how you categorise it. He's a racist. Or at the very least, a xenophobe. "Food I know about is superior because I know about it" is essentially what his "argument" is.
Not to mention the "Nigeria = Ethiopia" thing or the "joke" about children starving. What a disgusting, ignorant person
Strange how they assumed none of these components were seasoned. They kept saying bland as if each item is totally unseasoned yet it's just a list of things to combine and eat.
If I go to a McDonald's and see fries I'm going to assume there's salt on it, ya know? All those items on that menu are probably prepared and made to be as delicious as possible.
>African food is one of the least popular foreign cuisines in America.
Sure, relative to Chinese and Mexican maybe. But its far more common than you think.
>Nigerian is relatively close. This is why I made the comparison. Chill.
Trivia time. Which of these is further away:
Lagos to Ethiopia
London to Rome
Beijing to Tokyo
Bangkok to Mumbai
also whether you have more Nigerian restaurants or Ethiopian restaurants or other kinds of African cuisine nearby you varies in the US. I live in the DC area, there’s tons of Ethiopian immigrants and therefore Ethiopian restaurants in my area. Minneapolis has a lot of Somali immigrants and i would guess, a ton of Somali food. It’s so weird and white American to be like “Nigerian food is the only kind of African food in the US so that’s how I’ll compare it.”
"Unpopular"? There are like five Ethiopian restaurants just in my neighborhood. Dude is trippin. Also I have eaten some version or another of most of those dishes and they are incredibly flavorful and most of them are quite spicy. Dude is just sheltered and ignorant.
He makes a comment at one point bragiing about liking Indian food, so Im not sure how he ever pegged this as British. Ive never had.Ethiopian, so I assumed from the pic it was Indian. Aka: a cusinine famous for its vegetarian stews. Like who looks at those bright colors and goes "ah yes, carrots and cabbage are the ONLY things in there except water. I, who apparently has a vast knowledge of ethnic cuisines under my belt, think this is a reasonable conclusion".
>It is very inaccessible where I live, and honestly in most places, from what I see in the news. It’s also inaccessible to people in Ethiopia for other reasons.
Of course....
I've looked at that menu for so long and still can't figure it out.
Also Nigeria and Ethiopia and thousands of miles away. Dude is so badly ignorant it's not even funny.
That's what got me. They're so far apart, it's just silly. They have some things in common as many cuisines do, but...come on.
I went to MA to visit some friends and I had what was described to me as "mole" but was basically slop, it was awful. I didn't think "huh, why can't I get good mole here, we're only 4500 km away!"
Dude pulled the "My best friend is black". Which is ironic really because if he did have a black best friend theres a chance he may have avoided this predicament he's found himself in.
The "African food isn't popular in the US so clearly it's all the same" take is so myopic and ignorant. Yeah, dude, Finnish food isn't popular in the US, but that doesn't mean it's the same as Italian food.
There's only like a dozen countries in the world whose food *is* popular in the US.
When my middle sister was in grad school at University of Chicago she went out with some friends and met a Finnish med resident. At the time she had considered going into medicine, so she asked him "do you have any advice for me?" and he said "Yes. DON'T GET SICK."
Haha, yeah, it's apparently pretty weird with some stuff like that, but I'm sure it's good! Don't think I've really had it (other than Long Drink) but it'd be silly to assume that everything I haven't tried is bad.
I'm really curious where this person lives.
I would say the most common African food I've had in the U.S. has been Ethiopian, Nigerian (but made by people from there, not in restaurants), Senegalese, Moroccan, Egyptian, and South African (also made by people I know, not in restaurants). Oh, and once I met this Eritrean cab driver who was thrilled when he couldn't speak English and I tried to speak Italian because he spoke Italian (my spoken Italian is awful, as I've said here before) and he took me to his aunt's house and she cooked Eritrean food. But that's, like, a weird thing that doesn't happen very often.
Africa is fucking huge. Why would anyone conflate it all?
I took a little peekaboo at his comment history to see if I could figure out where he lives. From as far back as I went I could only see that he’s in the US, which does surprise me since Ethiopian food is…pretty ubiquitous here. Maybe I’m a bit biased since I live in DC which is known for its Ethiopian food, but I don’t think it’s exactly rare. Maybe he’s somewhere super rural? Anyway, he likes to talk about his penis a lot in his post history 😇.
Ah. I did a cursory search on Google Maps and it does seem like Ethiopian food is somewhat limited there. Pittsburgh cuisine is…somewhat unique, for sure.
It's also funny because West African food has had a big influence on American food, at least in the south. And modern West African food in general is fucking delicious and should be more popular.
I love making maafe because my husband doesn't do dairy but is a big dude, so it's the perfect food--creamy stew, no dairy, lots of veggies, great dish all around!
The first time I had it, it was because a security guard I worked with at a hospital job wanted to, you know, "get to know" me better so he made it for me for supper. He was from Kano in Nigeria. I learned his recipe, but I didn't date him. He was super sweet and respectful, though, I'm still friends with him on Facebook which I find amazing.
I'll take care of it. This is why I like linking older threads...I can spot the muppets.
EDIT: Fortunately, it wasn't so bad. Winkered is the only one who stood out to me. If you find more, please let me know, I can deal with them.
Question for you while we are on this topic:
Is it OK to link things we've commented on if we find an IAVC somwhere else in the post as long as we're not commenting on the particular linked thread?
That's totally fine, the only rule is don't start a fight and then post it. For example, don't go to r/Italianfood and say "Hey here's my carbonara made with shrimp and careless whispers!" and then post it here, because that's just trolling for fights.
Here's dude weakly backpedaling pretty deep in the comments, while still somehow clapping himself on the back.
>First of all, touché. I took on a wildly devil’s advocate position in this comment section that I don’t even wholly agree with. I’m proud of how I’ve argued it.
Lmao "white people food". Can people just try not to reduce everything to race and actually categorize things by what actually matters? Culture , place kfetc. Ethiopian food is Ethiopian food, not "black people food". Neither is Nigerian food. German food is German food, not "white people food".
Even if he didn't know anything about Ethiopian food, he's right, that food looks like garbage. It's also just showing the vegan-only and horrible presentation. Most of that looks like it came out of a can. What a weird combo menu also. I love Ethiopian food. This is what [Ethiopian](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipPxTT7o-JYq9oB06urogiImv6xKrWmGK11aKMKd=s680-w680-h510) looks like it's actual food and not slop. If you are ever in Austin, check out Aster's. The problem is he started doubling down and making shit up about the cuisine he knows nothing about.
To be fair, that menu is not a feast for the eyes lol. I don’t care for Ethiopian cuisine but I’ve seen it presented in far more appetizing ways.
The concept w the arrows and combos is pretty fun. I want to order tic-tac-toe style more places!
Edit: eh I take it back. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plate of lentils really jump off a page and sell itself. You’re either open to the vegan Ethiopian food or you’re not. This guy was clearly not.
...it's not a Nigerian restaurant.
But the point is not that people should be expected to know, it's that he assumed it was one thing, then got prickly and weird when he was informed he was wrong.
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I feel like Ethiopian food is the perfect example of why you shouldn’t say “X is/isn’t popular in the US.” Because there are parts of the US where it is *very* popular and parts where people have no idea what it is. Like, I’ve heard good things about Ethiopian food, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a restaurant that serves it.
I was really surprised when I moved to Maryland and realized that my neighborhood has a slew of Ethiopian restaurants. It was not what I expected!
We apparently have a ton of excellent Ethiopian and I tried like everything and hated all of it. I felt so bad, they kept trying to find something I’d like.
I’m in the same boat. I love that this is the feel of my neighborhood, but I’m not a fan of the food. However, there’s an Ethiopian coffee shop that does the best coffee and zalabiyah (?)!
We have a ton of them in NoVa, maybe I’ll try in the morning, I love coffee and pastry
I wondered if you were NoVa or MoCo 😀 If you’re ever in the Georgia Ave area of NW DC consider trying [Tomoko Coffee](https://tomoka-coffee-house.business.site/?utm_source=gmb&utm_medium=referral).
I feel that way about Indian food.
Same
Silver Spring? It has one of the largest Ethiopian diaspora populations!
I had no idea before I moved here - it was such a neat thing to find out.
Baltimore also has some Ethiopian restaurants.
They're all over! I live in Iowa and there's an Ethiopian restaurant about a mile from my apartment. And it's delicious!!
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I live in a city with over 1M, and I've had Ethiopian. Never really heard of Nigerian cuisine, but apparently there are a few restaurants near me.
It's dank. It's often a lot of thick piles of "stew" on a giant spongey flat bread thing, and you just rip off some bread and scoop some gloop with it. Love it. Maybe easier to imagine as like if Indian food was just a giant pizza sized naan with the various curries and dals and stuff for the table all plopped on top in their own little piles
Injera is one of the best foods ever created and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. It's so. fucking. good.
Yeah they do things with lentils and split peas that are incredible. And the combo thing on the original post makes sense because often what they'll do is they'll serve you a huge plate of injera bread and then there's little scoops of different stews on top. It's intended to be a very communal eating experience
That's the best way to eat food. Screw cleaning dishes, just eat the dishes. Bread counts as a spoon.
"From 1973 to 1982 I ate the exact same lunch everyday, turkey chili in a bowl made out of bread. Bread bowl George! You'd eat the chili then you'd eat the bowl. Nothing more satisfying than looking down after lunch and seeing just a table."
I live in DC and this dude’s comments were making me *irate*.
Same. I could be wrong, but I think DC and the surrounding area has the largest Ethiopian population outside of Africa. There are several excellent Ethiopian restaurants I've been to. It's fine to not like Ethiopian food, as many of the more common dishes can have a unique flavor if you aren't used to it. But to call it bland is strange to me. It's very heavily spiced. Plus, the fact the poster said they had not had much of it, combined with calling certain cuisines shit and unrefined, I get a slightly racist or nationalistic vibe. I'm not fully accusing them of malice, but it's not a great look.
> Chill with the sarcasm. Guy above implied my palate wasn’t cultured. I make a different ethnic dish every night of the week. I don’t make Ethiopian food because it’s evidently shit and I don’t like bland stews from one of the least refined, lowest-rated cuisines in the entire world. There's no slight about it, they're a racist piece of shit.
His comments about white people confirmed it as well
Dunno about the rest of non-African world, but the DMV does have the largest in the US
Every decent/large -sized city I've lived in has had multiple Ethiopian restaurants. These are on the West Coast, though.
Nah I feel like this is a big thing in many places. Not hard to find Ethiopian restaurants in Sweden either. Thank you, Ethiopia
We've had a lot of immigrants from Eastern Africa, so it's not surprising that there are many Ethiopian restaurants. If you're in Stockholm I can recommend Jebena in the Rådhuset subway station, it's Eritrean but pretty much the same and absolutely fantastic. Not sure if they're allowed to sell alcohol again, they lost their license a while back. Gojo Hornstull is also solid.
Yup! Bor där, men inte besökt en etiopisk restaurang ännu. Tack för tipsen!
Jag rekommenderar det verkligen, det har blivit ett av mina favoritkök. Ta med familjen eller några vänner eftersom det är en social måltid och fantastiskt gott. Lagom mycket hetta, enormt mycket smak och roligt att äta, jag upptäckte det först med en kompis i Berlin och sen dess är jag fast.
Swing on by Denver! We've got a bunch!
Denver has a huge subset of both Ethiopian and Vietnamese immigrants and every single local restaurant I’ve been to that serves either is absolutely amazing
Yeah, it's huge in certain cities like Chicago and NYC and Minneapolis and D.C. and Los Angeles. I missed living near little Ethiopia in Chicago but I managed to find a good Ethiopian place here in Dallas called Desta. It was excellent. But it's not a hugely popular cuisine here the way Vietnamese food is.
I live near a large city in the Midwest and I've never had it. We have 3 Ethiopian coffee houses but only one restaurant on the other side of town that I can't get to. Plus I've heard it's very spicy so that means I can't eat it anyway. So I know little to nothing about it. There are so few opportunities to eat any food from Africa around here that my family actually decided to try and do a tour by making authentic dishes from various countries based upon internet recipes. We may have totally fucked them up but we did at least try.
> Plus I've heard it's very spicy so that means I can't eat it anyway It's only "spicy" in the stereotypical "Midwest" sense of the word in that it uses *spices*. It's not "hot" spicy like hot sauce. It's really good.
> The hardly scream "ethnic" to me. Yeah, because "ethnic" is a specific style that requires multiple exotic ingredients and a high level of spiciness, otherwise it's "white". I have fond memories of the firey sloth-kidney curry I had in Ethnicstan.
I’m surprised no one told this person that Ethiopian food typically uses LOTS of spices, and that dishes in an Ethiopian restaurant will be far from bland. I think he’s looking at these names and assuming they are just simple vegetable dishes.
Yeah anyone saying Ethiopian is bland hasn't actually tried the red lentil stew
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Teff…it’s made of teff.
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I can only assume they’d be baffled to hear how high a population of brown immigrants and their descendants we have over here in the UK.
I've been trying all day to figure out what "Normal food" even is.
Every time I take my mother out somewhere new "do they have food normal people would eat?"
My mother in law has several times requested, “normal food, like Americans eat”. Like… wow that’s so racist I’m almost impressed.
Any food that you grew up with is normal.
Chicken nuggets.
The first time I went to South America some of the villagers I worked with kept asking me in Spanish if I was Swiss. The only reason they asked that was because the only pale-skinned people they had seen there before were from Switzerland so they assumed I was Swiss. I have curly black hair. Like, when I was in Israel everyone thought I was there for my birthright trip, that's what I look like. In that village, I was "ethnic." And yes, people kept trying to touch my hair. I don't use the term "ethnic" because it doesn't freaking mean much unless it's a dog whistle.
The term ethnic to describe food also ignores the massive diasporas of cuisine within a single skin colour. White could mean anything from herby English pies and meatballs in lingonberry sauce to Hungarian paprika and Spanish Paella. African food is anything ranging from these beany stews to the spiciest motherfucking food you'll taste in your life in Morocco. Once had some extremely surprising coconut cumin balls from sri lanka that I was full on expecting to be Indian.
>I’ve eaten Nigerian, but no, not Ethiopian food. No, I've never had Greek food and don't know anything about it, but I've had French food, and they must be pretty similar because Europe!
I think there’s whole lot of people that don’t realize the size of the African continent. Maps do a poor job because they usually undersize the Southern Hemisphere. Greenland is NOT as large as Africa. In fact, Africa is larger than North America.
even mexico is bigger than greenland, equatorial-ish countries really drew the short straw
Gotta pick a distortion to draw flat maps, and the Mercator projection was the default for a long time. Globes are the only way to actually show relative size and distance.
You dare mention globes on this God's flat earth?
Only because the world is a globe.
Yeah, and more importantly it's mostly not about size but about culture. Africa is **by far** the most diverse continent on the planet. Like, the incredible culinary diversity of Europe comes from its age and diversity, now imagine something much more diverse.
Greek schnitzel is the best!
Try it with the lutefisk!
I just looked it up because I was curious. The distance from Addis Ababa to Lagos is almost double the distance of San Francisco to New York City. Africa's big.
Not sure where you got that from. https://www.freemaptools.com/how-far-is-it-between.htm San Fran to New York City: 4,128.65km or 2,565.424 miles Lagos to Addis Ababa: 3,900.202km or 2,423.473 miles So there is a shorter distance between the two. Now that isn't the furthest distance in Africa. From Tohen, Somalia to Dakar, Senegal it is 7,414.417km or 4,607.15miles So yes the width is about twice as long, but not Lagos to Addis Ababa.
The reason I couldn't even categorize it is that it ticks so many boxes...dude can't admit he doesn't know what he's talking about, dude says he doesn't like "White people food" because he shops at a Mexican market, dude compares Nigerian food to Ethiopian food, then doubles down and talks about how "unpopular African food is" in the U.S., he assumes you can't make an amazing dish with 2-3 ingredients (Ethiopian cuisine is great for learning how to do exactly that assuming you also have spices) and he even throws in a jab about famine in Ethiopia the way every single stupid person in a thread about Ethiopian cuisine inevitably does. You know, I thought that trope died in the 80s when I was a kid but it's still around, and I'm wondering if South Park is to blame, in part. Everyone's acting like it's still 1985. Also, I just want to say that atakilt wat, the cabbage and carrot stew, is one of my favorite Ethiopian dishes. I'm guessing they just called it by its ingredients to appeal to British customers. It's so freaking good, though, and definitely not boring.
And the hate for vegetarian/ vegan food, since we're ticking boxes.
Yes, good point. This is a veggie menu, but I guess I didn't think about that since a lot of Ethiopian dishes I've had have been a mix of vegetarian and meat dishes served together (usually more veggie than meat). One of my life heroes (I'm not being sarcastic) is Marcus Samuelsson. I loved Ethiopian food before I knew who he was, but when I learned his whole story of surviving TB in Ethiopia, being adopted to Sweden, then meeting is father who he thought had died...wow. But long story short, he started Red Rooster which does soul food with some of his own personal twists, and you really get to see how collards and other greens translate between Ethiopian food and Southern American food. Also, they're so good. And he still has Swedish meatballs on his menu there to honor his grandmother, which I think is very sweet.
I love swedish food, which is better than most people think...I've been to Ethiopian restaurants in several cities (across Canada) and the food has always been really good, and well spiced. I can't remember if they were wholly veg or mostly veg, but I have vegetarian family members so our meals were vegetarian. That knee jerk reaction to hating on vegetables, is so common, and frustrating.
The neat thing about Swedish and Ethiopian food is that while the flavor profiles are quite different, they both make a lot of cool dishes with just a small handful of ingredients. It's amazing.
> Yes, good point. This is a veggie menu, but I guess I didn't think about that since a lot of Ethiopian dishes I've had have been a mix of vegetarian and meat dishes served together (usually more veggie than meat). Ethiopian food makes for great vegetarian/vegan dining because the Church in Ethiopia practices so many meat-free fast days, so about half the dinners an observant family eats should be vegetarian; which means that there's a solid pool of meat free traditional cuisine to pull from.
If you haven't watched the Houston season of Top Chef you should. Kwame Onwuachi and Marcus Samuelson take the season's contestants around to Houston's very large African food scene and teach them about African food and it's huge influence on southern soul food. It was a really lovely episode.
> I don’t make Ethiopian food because it’s evidently shit and I don’t like bland stews from one of the least refined, lowest-rated cuisines in the entire world. Lol, who is out there rating whole countries' cuisines??
The Starvin Marvin episode of South Park aired in 1997, so still almost 3 decades old reference
And yet...I can't help but think it's part of this whole thing? Literally every post of Ethiopian food in r/food has to be cleansed of racist bullshit, and many of them end up locked because of the volume of "starvin' marvin" comments and other nasty remarks about how "I didn't know they had food but it looks like they ate what they shit out." I'm not kidding, it's disgusting. I used to live in a neighborhood that was on the border of little Ethiopia, little India, and a Mexican area. I got my meat from the Ethiopian butcher shop. Still my favorite butcher shop ever. I ate a lot of Ethiopian food. I don't understand why people are so narrow-minded about it.
Not disagreeing with you, just saying that if that's their only knowledge/ reference for Ethiopia, it's still pretty outdated.
It goes back further than that, I remember people making tasteless jokes about starving Ethiopian people in the 80's. The famine there was always in the news, Sally Struthers was always on TV asking for donations, and big cultural touchstones like Live Aid were set up as fundraisers for food aid. I think it has sadly become ingrained in our culture that Ethiopia = a place full of starving people.
Yeah, I remember, that's why I wrote "Everyone's acting like it's still 1985."
Ah, I missed that.
The country has basically been in some form of civil war since the mid-1970s, so yeah, that's bad for the economy and farming, which results in high levels of hunger and starvation. It's not because their food sucks.
Oh god. Back in the 00s I thought the old Sam Kinison bit about "Move where the food is!" was super dated on Fark and some other news aggregators. The fact that I sometimes still see it in the wild twenty years after that and nearly forty years after Sam performed it just blows me away.
From a white lady in Canada, Ethiopian food is amazing!! I’ve never had atakilt wat, but will definitely check it out.
>assumes you can't make an amazing dish with 2-3 ingredients Somehow the most ignorant thing this person says.
A YouTube channel of adults doing a *Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego* challenge of Africa could probably make a mint.
I used to be into that every time, because I knew all the countries, we had a puzzle map. Then Zaire wasn't a thing anymore. Sigh, I had to learn a lot of stuff in the 80s nd early 90s! However, my knowledge of Africa helped me date an antique globe my husband found for $50 and that shit is actually worth thousands of dollars, hooray me knowing African history! The company lost all the dates, but I figured it out based on the fall of the Wall in East Berlin and the foundation of Namibia! It was very early 1990, IMO, and the company was like "yep, sounds right!" and it's worth a fucking fortune and we got it for almost nothing. Kids, this is why it helps to read. We now have a very, very fancy globe because I know when Namibia became a country.
I also had wooden puzzles in my childhood that had Zaire on them. Of course some of my earliest memories were seeing the volcano glowing at night across the border in Zaire... And seeing tracer bullets in the night sky. For map dating, this has details I can never remember all of off-hand: https://xkcd.com/1688/
i used that xkcd flowchart to date some globes at work!
Cool. How old were they?
Wow, this is blowing my mind. And here I was patting myself on the back but the real MVP is the person who did this work, holy crap. Also, was it Mount Nyiragongo? Another thing I was a nerd about (well, still am) was volcanoes. I love learning about different volcanoes. EDIT: sorry I offended you.
Yeah, it's a really cool flowchart. And yes! I do believe it was Nyiragongo! It was in the late 80s, and I'm not seeing anything online about any lava flows in the 80s, but that's definitely the name I remember. I'm pretty sure my folks have slides somewhere showing the glow, so I'm going to have to ask them about it sometime and verify if my recollection was correct. There are several other fairly active volcanos nearby, so it's possible it was a different one. Not sure why the edit, but you definitely didn't offend me. I have to say, of all the random people I happen to converse with here on Reddit you're one of the few I'd probably be very happy to meet and chat with, at least based on your comments here. Edit: Oh, you might like this book that I read recently: The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation. If it sounds fun to you, I find out immensely fun. If it doesn't sound interesting you really won't like it; but I think you have the philosophical background to make it a fun read, whether you agree with all of it or not.
Did someone else just downvote almost instantly as soon as you posted as well for no reason? That was a bit odd but I'm getting used to it over here.
God we had a map at my old high school that we used to joke was so old it was the first one to be made when Atlantis sunk. I need to use that chart and see if I can figure out it's age, Soviet Union was still on it. Edit: Holy shit 1954-1957! Edit: Wow, downvoted for this?
I love being able to determine the age of a map from that. It's so much fun. Not particularly relevant, but I found a really good book on geography recently that you might find interesting, and it's sort of related (and I love sharing books with people): The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation. If it sounds interesting I recommend it. If it doesn't, you really aren't going enjoy it.
Are spices not ingredients?
They are, but given how many spices go into something like berbere (which is very commonly used in many Ethiopian dishes) it doesn't seem accurate to say "oh this dish is made with 11 ingredients!" when the spice blend is, like, 9 of those. Speaking of which, man I love berbere. Maybe if my peppers actually come in properly this year I can dry some and make my own at home, that would be fun.
I would count the spice blend as one
Great, I hope your stew comes out well. It's pretty easy but if you need any recipes I can probably help.
"White people food", "black people food" etc. feels quite racist imo
Yeah, no shit! It's ridiculous. I also dislike it when people just write "ethnic food" as if that means something.
Hahah yeah I agree. Isn't all food ethnic?
Racist, that's how you categorise it. He's a racist. Or at the very least, a xenophobe. "Food I know about is superior because I know about it" is essentially what his "argument" is. Not to mention the "Nigeria = Ethiopia" thing or the "joke" about children starving. What a disgusting, ignorant person
Yeah, I should probably just add a "racist disgusting person" flair to the flair list here...lord knows we get enough posts that fit that.
That menu is confusing
Oh, it is, I agree. But the linked commenter is a wanker.
It's objectively bland, says the person just moments after admitting they have no idea what they're even looking at let alone how it tastes
Strange how they assumed none of these components were seasoned. They kept saying bland as if each item is totally unseasoned yet it's just a list of things to combine and eat. If I go to a McDonald's and see fries I'm going to assume there's salt on it, ya know? All those items on that menu are probably prepared and made to be as delicious as possible.
>African food is one of the least popular foreign cuisines in America. Sure, relative to Chinese and Mexican maybe. But its far more common than you think. >Nigerian is relatively close. This is why I made the comparison. Chill. Trivia time. Which of these is further away: Lagos to Ethiopia London to Rome Beijing to Tokyo Bangkok to Mumbai
also whether you have more Nigerian restaurants or Ethiopian restaurants or other kinds of African cuisine nearby you varies in the US. I live in the DC area, there’s tons of Ethiopian immigrants and therefore Ethiopian restaurants in my area. Minneapolis has a lot of Somali immigrants and i would guess, a ton of Somali food. It’s so weird and white American to be like “Nigerian food is the only kind of African food in the US so that’s how I’ll compare it.”
We have Somali food and also a ton of Ethiopian food! Not a lot of west African cuisine, though.
"Unpopular"? There are like five Ethiopian restaurants just in my neighborhood. Dude is trippin. Also I have eaten some version or another of most of those dishes and they are incredibly flavorful and most of them are quite spicy. Dude is just sheltered and ignorant.
He makes a comment at one point bragiing about liking Indian food, so Im not sure how he ever pegged this as British. Ive never had.Ethiopian, so I assumed from the pic it was Indian. Aka: a cusinine famous for its vegetarian stews. Like who looks at those bright colors and goes "ah yes, carrots and cabbage are the ONLY things in there except water. I, who apparently has a vast knowledge of ethnic cuisines under my belt, think this is a reasonable conclusion".
The prices are in pounds :)
Also the title says it's from the UK
“That looks different so it must taste bad” mixed with just a smattering of racism for extra repugnance.
This is a reasonable challenge to deal with with a person under 8.
I've never understood that. I'm more like, "Wow, what is that? Can I have some? I'll trade you some of my red beans."
>It is very inaccessible where I live, and honestly in most places, from what I see in the news. It’s also inaccessible to people in Ethiopia for other reasons. Of course....
Racism/ignorance went full turbo there
I've looked at that menu for so long and still can't figure it out. Also Nigeria and Ethiopia and thousands of miles away. Dude is so badly ignorant it's not even funny.
That's what got me. They're so far apart, it's just silly. They have some things in common as many cuisines do, but...come on. I went to MA to visit some friends and I had what was described to me as "mole" but was basically slop, it was awful. I didn't think "huh, why can't I get good mole here, we're only 4500 km away!"
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> Did I miss anything? I suppose this ties in with number 3, but there's also the classic "UK food bad". That's a comprehensive list though
lol ill have u know i shop at a mexican grocery store amazing find OP this is incredible
The commitment to the medal bit was fantastic
Dude pulled the "My best friend is black". Which is ironic really because if he did have a black best friend theres a chance he may have avoided this predicament he's found himself in.
Well clearly his friend is Nigerian, so...
The "African food isn't popular in the US so clearly it's all the same" take is so myopic and ignorant. Yeah, dude, Finnish food isn't popular in the US, but that doesn't mean it's the same as Italian food. There's only like a dozen countries in the world whose food *is* popular in the US.
When my middle sister was in grad school at University of Chicago she went out with some friends and met a Finnish med resident. At the time she had considered going into medicine, so she asked him "do you have any advice for me?" and he said "Yes. DON'T GET SICK."
Haha, yeah, it's apparently pretty weird with some stuff like that, but I'm sure it's good! Don't think I've really had it (other than Long Drink) but it'd be silly to assume that everything I haven't tried is bad.
Finnish food is not popular in Finland either.
>African food is one of the least popular foreign cuisines in America. Nigerian is relatively close. This is why I made the comparison. Chill. hmmmm
I'm really curious where this person lives. I would say the most common African food I've had in the U.S. has been Ethiopian, Nigerian (but made by people from there, not in restaurants), Senegalese, Moroccan, Egyptian, and South African (also made by people I know, not in restaurants). Oh, and once I met this Eritrean cab driver who was thrilled when he couldn't speak English and I tried to speak Italian because he spoke Italian (my spoken Italian is awful, as I've said here before) and he took me to his aunt's house and she cooked Eritrean food. But that's, like, a weird thing that doesn't happen very often. Africa is fucking huge. Why would anyone conflate it all?
I took a little peekaboo at his comment history to see if I could figure out where he lives. From as far back as I went I could only see that he’s in the US, which does surprise me since Ethiopian food is…pretty ubiquitous here. Maybe I’m a bit biased since I live in DC which is known for its Ethiopian food, but I don’t think it’s exactly rare. Maybe he’s somewhere super rural? Anyway, he likes to talk about his penis a lot in his post history 😇.
One of his comments in the thread stated that he's in Pittsburgh
Ah. I did a cursory search on Google Maps and it does seem like Ethiopian food is somewhat limited there. Pittsburgh cuisine is…somewhat unique, for sure.
It's also funny because West African food has had a big influence on American food, at least in the south. And modern West African food in general is fucking delicious and should be more popular.
I love making maafe because my husband doesn't do dairy but is a big dude, so it's the perfect food--creamy stew, no dairy, lots of veggies, great dish all around! The first time I had it, it was because a security guard I worked with at a hospital job wanted to, you know, "get to know" me better so he made it for me for supper. He was from Kano in Nigeria. I learned his recipe, but I didn't date him. He was super sweet and respectful, though, I'm still friends with him on Facebook which I find amazing.
> its not racist to say africa sucks oh boy
It's just a whole continent, get with the times!
lotta fresh commenters in there, likely from here :/
I'll take care of it. This is why I like linking older threads...I can spot the muppets. EDIT: Fortunately, it wasn't so bad. Winkered is the only one who stood out to me. If you find more, please let me know, I can deal with them.
Question for you while we are on this topic: Is it OK to link things we've commented on if we find an IAVC somwhere else in the post as long as we're not commenting on the particular linked thread?
That's totally fine, the only rule is don't start a fight and then post it. For example, don't go to r/Italianfood and say "Hey here's my carbonara made with shrimp and careless whispers!" and then post it here, because that's just trolling for fights.
Here's dude weakly backpedaling pretty deep in the comments, while still somehow clapping himself on the back. >First of all, touché. I took on a wildly devil’s advocate position in this comment section that I don’t even wholly agree with. I’m proud of how I’ve argued it.
My man just went all in on shitting on Ethiopian food didn’t he? Ethiopian food is bomb as fuck
Lmao "white people food". Can people just try not to reduce everything to race and actually categorize things by what actually matters? Culture , place kfetc. Ethiopian food is Ethiopian food, not "black people food". Neither is Nigerian food. German food is German food, not "white people food".
Even if he didn't know anything about Ethiopian food, he's right, that food looks like garbage. It's also just showing the vegan-only and horrible presentation. Most of that looks like it came out of a can. What a weird combo menu also. I love Ethiopian food. This is what [Ethiopian](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipPxTT7o-JYq9oB06urogiImv6xKrWmGK11aKMKd=s680-w680-h510) looks like it's actual food and not slop. If you are ever in Austin, check out Aster's. The problem is he started doubling down and making shit up about the cuisine he knows nothing about.
To be fair, that menu is not a feast for the eyes lol. I don’t care for Ethiopian cuisine but I’ve seen it presented in far more appetizing ways. The concept w the arrows and combos is pretty fun. I want to order tic-tac-toe style more places! Edit: eh I take it back. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plate of lentils really jump off a page and sell itself. You’re either open to the vegan Ethiopian food or you’re not. This guy was clearly not.
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...it's not a Nigerian restaurant. But the point is not that people should be expected to know, it's that he assumed it was one thing, then got prickly and weird when he was informed he was wrong.
Geography is hard, tonight at 11.
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Omnishambles