Eating out is definitely a culture often related to urbanization or recreation or even in times of penury. The following paragraph shows the cultural aspect of eating out. “Eating out is a significant aspect of Ethiopian food culture, with a strong emphasis on sharing and community. Traditional meals are often shared from a large communal plate, with guests and visitors receiving choice morsels of meat and dishes.” Addis Ababa as the diplomatic capital of Africa is a typical example of a capital city that has developed its food culture in the last few decades by combining its rich traditional or local dishes while importing foreign food cultures from around the world.
Addis Ababa has definitively become the eating capital of Africa, that is to say a city where the traditional, the modern, the European, the Indian, the Chinese, the American, the Russian, the Japanese etc. dishes and specialties can be easily found on one condition: you must have pockets deep enough to cover the not so cheap, or let me be frank, the expensive servings although I had not been there myself and my observations are based on the opinions of those lucky enough to frequent these cosmopolitan eateries.
Eating out is no doubt a culture. This is a culture born of urbanization, division of labor and economic progress. You eat out for many reasons: for pleasure, for expediency, for business, because of time constraints in the daily grind. Eating out is a culture substitution. When we eat out, we are substituting our home with places away from home. Eating out may also be a culture of pleasure, recreation and enjoyment. We sometimes eat out to discover what our home cannot provide us with the foods we need or crave. Distance may be a factor that encourages eating out. Most of us work away from our residence. We have little time to commute to our house and back to work during lunchtime, so we choose eating out. This is “forced” eating out, if you like.
In Addis, one may observe three types of eateries. I prefer to use the term ‘eatery’ over restaurant because most of them do not deserve the second qualification because of their size, capacity and the variety of food they offer to their clients. The first category includes the restaurants in big or luxury hotels that are beyond the reach of most of the people for obvious reasons. These are no go areas even if you die from hunger. You cannot even approach their gates lest you would be arrested and accused of theft. The big hotels are only for watching from a good distance. If there is anything they can access from a goo distance, it is the smell of food that leaves of salivating so much so you would prefer to run away from it than stand there and smell the unbearably sweet smell.
The second category of eateries or “restaurants” comprises places where people in the medium income bracket are often frequenting. Even these people cannot go there every day, because of one single barrier: the fast rising food prices. At one time in our recent past, food was one of the cheapest consumer items. Now it has probably become the most expensive one. It is not unusual these days for food prices to run faster than ever, going up every two day or so.
In the older days, people were used to seeing constant prices. The figures on the menu remained at the same place for many years if not decades. The vast majority of eateries in Addis fall in the low class categories and these hotels are becoming inaccessible even for their less fortunate customers. There are many old slum areas in Addis where the level of poverty is shocking and getting food is the single most worrying concern for thousands of hopeless inhabitants.
Mercato is a thriving market dotted with pockets of slums. Food is so scarce in those places that you buy it by gursha, or by the 777 handful. Each handful of leftover food that is collected from eateries around the market, used to cost 10 cents. A guy used to stand near the pile of leftover food while the clients formed queues in front of him. The man takes a handful of food and brings it to the client’s mouth after taking the regular 10cents bill. The ugly face of poverty! Isn’t it?
There are also new slum areas that are spreading around the city outskirts that surround the new Addis of high rise buildings, state of the art apartments and carefully manicured parks around expensive hotels.
If Addis Ababa has one thousand hotels, the first one hundred may fall in first category, maybe two hundred of them in the second category and eight hundred of them may be low class eating outlets. If these three categories of eateries have something in common, it may be in the two types of foods they serve to their customers. They usually served traditional Ethiopian dishes as well as foreign foods collectively called “yeferenji megeb”, roughly translated as “food of foreigners”, particularly Europeans because these foods were introduced to the country by the Italians, the French or by people with European origin.
Surprisingly enough most of the foods ordered by locals as well as foreigners are traditional ones. Ethiopian traditional foods are not sophisticated to the viewer or the eater but they have that mysterious power of attraction. It may be their smells or colors or both. I once came across a piece of writing on Ethiopian traditional foods. The writer shares their appreciation of Ethiopian traditional foods in the following lines, “Has a meal ever made such an impact that it’s become forever seared into your memory? The colors, the presentation, the way the bread felt on your fingertips. It made such an impression that you still think about it twenty, even thirty years later.
The writer went on to say, “It wasn’t just the taste of the food that made an impression on me. It was the whole experience. From the way the colorful stews were served together on a large pancake to the way you ate them with your hands using small pieces of injera, I was mesmerized from start to finish. Injera was especially fascinating for me because I had never touched nor tasted bread with that kind of texture. At the time, it was truly a unique experience, one that obviously had a lasting impact on me.”
Nowadays Ethiopian cuisine has evolved so much that it has even started to attract the attention of foreigners or expatriates that have grasped its significance and try to make the most out of it. Thankfully, there are so many restaurants that offer traditional dishes prepared with a heavy dose of ‘modernized’ cooking techniques and a touch of artistic excellence, with a variety of colors and tastes added to it.
So have culinary tastes and impressions evolved. In the not distant past, ‘shiro wot’ and ‘yetsom beyayinetu’ two of the major food choices for the fasting season are not served in the old style when they were considered “yedeha megeb” or food for the poor. Nowadays the posh restaurant and stylish eating joints offer these foods in a way that outshines the meaty dishes of yore. I would not indulge into the price changes because economics is not my forte.
The food culture of a country is very much part of the intangible heritages and as such it should be part of the country’s patrimony. Ethiopia’s food cultures have a vast opportunity for improvements and for accessing the global food varieties that are served anywhere in the world and at the most prominent hotels and restaurants.
Regarding yeferenj megeb, some of them are served both in big and smaller hotels. Pasta was introduced to Ethiopia during the Italian occupation and has almost become an Ethiopian foodstuff. In big hotels, it may be served in various forms while here many people like pasta served with injera or the traditional circular bread. It’s official name is pasta with injera. And it’s famous among people who love both injera and pasta served together. When served in this way, pasta loses its original identity or nationality if you like. I did not want to dwell too much on foreign foods, first because I don’t know many of them and second, I cannot eat at expensive hotels. The above example is typical of yeferenji megeb and that is that. Bon Appétit, if you are enjoying your meal!
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 31 MAY 2025
