Restaurant Review: Little Ethiopia Restaurant

Little Ethiopia Restaurant

Owning a restaurant is hard work. But Tensay Assress has double the work on his plate. He is the head chef and owner of  Little Ethiopia Restaurant. His restaurant isn't just a business but a way for him to share his culture with Americans. 

"Most of them, this is their first time doing this," Assress said. "Also this is the first time people are eating with their fingers. So all of the different experiences. You see people enjoying it, you see people trying to share a different culture. That's what actually helps you keep going in this business."

Ethiopian food focuses on enhancing the spices and bringing out their flavors. Assress relates it to Indian and Mexican food since they use many kinds of curry and focus on sauces. 

"For some Americans, it might be considered a little spicy," Assress warned. "It's probably one of the most expensive foods to prepare compared to Italian food and all other food because so many spices goes into it."

Tensay Assress in his kitchen.

But there is another detail that separates Ethiopian food from Indian and Mexican cuisine - injera, a spongy type of bread that looks like a crepe or tortilla, is used in place of the usual fork and knife. In all Ethiopian dishes, pork won't be found but rather lamb, beef or chicken. However, many customers find the numerous vegetarian options helpful.

His dishes are as authentic as the food his grandparents and parents grew up eating. Assress was born and raised in the capital, Abbis Ababa. He moved to the United States for high school and college. Although his family hired servants to do the cooking, his mother and grandmother taught him and his four sisters how to cook. Ever since, cooking has been one of his favorite past times and when a family friend asked him to take over the business, he couldn't refuse. 

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Since he took over the restaurant, it has become a gathering place for his family events, where they cook Doro Wot, two chicken legs and a hard boiled egg stewed in a red marinated pepper sauce. Doro Wot is traditionally made for special guests, which makes it an important tradition for his family to continue.  

"This is a place where everybody comes to meet, especially on a Sunday maybe after church and stuff," Assress said.

The Assress family isn't the only ones who come to the restaurant frequently. Friends Charlotte Shmazonian and Damali Brown have made it their weekly tradition to have lunch every Sunday.

"I feel like when you go to a small family restaurant its like them," Shmazonian said. "They're cooking the food the way that they learned how to cook it. It's authentic. It's not a commercialized thing. It's not put on. It is what it is."

Customers enjoying the vegetarian appetizer.

Shmazonian said that Brown introduced her to the restaurant and has been coming back ever since. Both said they enjoy the good service and consistently good food. 

Another customer, Schantelle Cason, also enjoys the environment of the restaurant so much that she comes at least once a month. Cason used to work for an Ethiopian restaurant in New Jersey during her grad school years and eating Ethiopian food makes her reminiscent of her past. Her personal favorites are the vegetarian platters. 

"It's like eating Southern food, you know. Or anyone else's home cooking, you know," Cason said. "Like it varies from mother to mother but it's all the same."

Apart from the traditional food, customers will be emerged in traditional Ethiopian music and pictures of Ethiopia decorating the walls.  While exposing Americans to Ethiopian culture, Assress tries to make a difference back at his home in Ethiopia through fundraising for building schools, creating water wells and planting trees. He even helps the United States by fundraising for cancer and AIDS patients.

 "We're out here to better ourselves and to hopefully do something good for this country or the country back home," Assress said. "So any kind of studies that help benefit the whole world, I want to be a part of. So that's just a way of giving back."

Restaurant Review: Singapore's Banana Leaf

"Number 53, you're order is ready," Michael Gazal says every evening he comes to work at Singapore's Banana Leaf. "Rendang chicken and curry puffs." 

These are just two of the Singaporean dishes that this stand in the Farmer's Market on 3rd and Fairfax has to offer. While Chinese cuisine and spices have influenced most new Singapore dishes, Gazal said that their Singapore food is one of a kind. 

"There was a discussion whether we do the standard food, which is the Singapore-Chinese style, or our own food," Gazal said. "We ended up doing our own. More similar to the Indonesian food, which caters better to the crowd locally."

Mee Goreng Chicken

The food served at Singapore's Banana Leaf is from Little India, the area where his parents and grandparents were raised. They are Singaporean Indian Jews so they don't serve pork. According to Gazal, the original style of Singaporean food is an Indian, Malaysian cooking with a rich flavor rather than the sweeter flavor of the Chinese influenced dishes. Even though Chinese cuisine constantly changes and fuses with other kinds of food, the recipes at this Farmer's Market stand go back many generations. 

"We would never run to our friend's house," Gazal remembered. "Mom was cooking, grandmother was cooking. Go eat first and then go out. Every cousin is the same way. We love our food! It's very unusual."

His father, Ike Gazal, said they chose their favorite meals they made at home to serve to customers. However, they chose traditional dishes that would translate best to customers like fried noodles, fried rice, satay sticks and curry. Over the nine and a half years they have been in business, their menu hasn't changed much. 

"It was all Michael," Ike said. "It was all his idea."

About nine years ago, Gazal had just returned from Singapore and sold his business when this space became available. 

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"It just looked right," Gazal said. "It looked like the kind of place where you would open up a Singaporean restaurant in, which is called a hocker center in Singapore. Small shops, this was the perfect spot."

Ike said Michael initially wanted to only sell rohi paratha, grilled Indian bread with curry dipping sauce. But since they were starting the business, they decided to have a full menu. Now that he just got back from Asia, Gazal plans to add a few Chinese-inspired dishes to the menu in the upcoming months. 

"It's fun to provide a service where people are very happy with your product," Gazal said. "You know, usually when you provide a product you don't see their reaction. With food, you see it right away. Sometimes negative but for the most part, it's been a very positive experience because people come back."

And customers continue coming back like Judy Zhou, a student at USC. Her friend told her about the stand and she has been coming back since. She said that the consistent good curry and good service makes this stand one of her favorites at the Farmer's Market.

"Well the food is really good for one," Zhou said. "And it's not like super expensive. Every time I've gone I've had a really good experience." 

Roderick Herbst tried Singapore's Banana Leaf for the first time. Since he has recently become a vegetarian, the menu offered him a lot of options. 

"A little bit spicy, that's why I'm glistening right now," Herbst said. "It's a good taste, good flavors in it."

"How often do you go to a family business any more? Especially in a big city," Gazal said. "The parents are there, everyone knows your name, you know their name. It's not a very common thing."