Coffee brewed Ethiopian style in Addington
Just when you thought you’d experienced every kind of coffeemaking method there is, Habesha shows there’s another way to brew it.
Habesha Restaurant and Cafe, formerly Pulse Cafe, is hidden in the industrial back streets of Addington, Christchurch, serving Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine and coffee.
And it’s all authentic, from the small coffee bowls to the recommended eating with your hands.
Coffee had its own ritual in Ethiopia, Habesha owner Yosief Kahsai said. “On Sunday, you must have coffee – it’s very social.”
Kahsai imports raw coffee beans from Ethiopia and roasts them on site in a small pot. The browned beans are then emptied onto a woven mat to allow them to cool before they are ground.
The drink is brewed in a jebena, a clay flask, usually making seven small bowls of coffee about the size of two cupped hands. It’s traditionally consumed black with three spoons of sugar, Kahsai said, but milk could be added. It was just one of the customs he missed from his home country. Another is the food. “You miss the injera.”
Knives and forks are not required when it comes to eating many the dishes, although they are an option at every table. Instead injera, a fermented flatbread, can be picked apart and used to handle the food.
“No fork, hands are brilliant.” Just “a few fingers” were needed, Kahsai said, demonstrating with his thumb, index and middle finger. “You can’t eat the traditional food with a knife and fork.”
Dishes including zigni (a spicy beef stew), tibs (stir-fried meat) and doro (chicken stew) are served on or with injera, prompting eaters to tear a piece off to eat the meal with.
There was no avoiding getting a bit on your hands, Kahsai said. “The whole day, you’ll smell it.” Kahsai moved to Christchurch in 2000 as a nurse. He kept up the job while studying cooking.
He opened his first business, Joy Takeaway, on Lincoln Rd in 2019.
He moved premises to Sockburn later that year.
After some trial and error, he ended up in Addington, opening Habesha at the start of this year.
“I’m doing it because it’s my passion,” he said.
“We are not doing it only for money, it’s about introducing our own traditional food to the rest of New Zealand – that’s what this is all about.”