The sultry spice of Ethiopia’s doro wat
The Killer Dish: A regular installment in which our dining critic examines an outstanding local dish — its history, who created it, how it’s made and what makes it special.
Cafe Lalibela in Tempe is a teeming trove of sultry scents, a mix of toasted chiles, cinnamon, cardamom and coffee swirling around platters of meats and vegetables that look like a desert landscape, carefully mounded into miniature dunes. But while the varied dishes can be ordered a la carte, it’s difficult to find a table that hasn’t ordered doro wat, Ethiopia’s rich and intense chicken stew.
As culinary metaphors go, this one writes itself.
At the center of a serving of doro wat sits a glistening, crimson egg, like the beating heart of a nation’s cuisine, a symbol of love born and reborn.
That it’s fabulously delicious seems almost incidental given the dish’s inherent poetry. But when it comes to evoking passion, it’s difficult to top the fiery intensity of doro wat, prepared with pride and widely considered the national dish of Ethiopia.
From Ethiopia to Arizona
Atsade Desta first shared the flavors of her native Ethiopia with the Valley in
1996, when she opened the original Cafe Lalibela in Phoenix.
Soon thereafter, she moved the business to Tempe, where it has stood as a community touchstone for two decades, run by Desta along with her daughter and son-inlaw, Salem and Anibal Beyene.
Salem and Anibal met while visiting Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city, where their families have long been friends. Anibal says — not without a hint of humor but in all earnestness — that Salem’s doro wat played a pivotal role in their courtship. It’s a common sentiment in Ethiopia, where evolving gender roles have not displaced the traditional notion that a good doro wat is the sign of a good cook, and good cooking is the sign of a good wife.
Beyond being one of Ethiopia’s most emblematic dishes, doro wat also is one of its most popular. The diverse and multitudinous tribes that comprise Ethiopian culture all have their distinct culinary traditions, but most have embraced doro wat, a dish eaten frequently day-to-day, often on holidays and always on Easter, when Ethiopia’s Christians break the meatless Lenten fast.
First ingredient: Patience
Though the end product can be explosive, this isn’t a dish that requires wild technique — just care and patience.
Desta starts by slowly simmering minced onions in water with berbere, a blend of dried chiles and spices like ginger, cardamom, coriander, fenugreek, cinnamon or nutmeg. The precise list and balance of spices can vary wildly. Some are pure fire, some are more earthy and some are sweetly complex, but all serve as the cornerstone for wats, the type of Ethiopian stews among which doro wat is the best known.
This mixture can simmer for hours (though less common, some will cook it for days), and once the onions sweeten and