Majestic treat on old Jeppe St
MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING: A DOWNTOWN ADVENTURE FILLED WITH HOSPITABLE CHARM
Each week Marie-Lais looks out for the unusual, the unique, the downright quirky or just something or someone we might have had no idea about, even though we live here. We like to travel our own cities and their surrounds, curious to feel them out. This week she’s receiving Majestic treatment. Marie-Lais Emond
Finding the entrance to the main building, the Medical Arts, is like trying to get into Ali Baba’s treasure cave. The “open sesame” is remembering that local Ethiopians call the building “Majesty”.
It possibly alludes to Haile Selassie’s royal Amharic lineage. But the word works. Suddenly everyone knows what we’re talking about.
A man springs up and escorts Heather and I along to an entrance that’s heavily disguised as a shop.
Actually, there are two entrances. Both look like – and are – shops. Above one, in tiny letters, is “Medical Arts Building”.
Little Ethiopia, sometimes-called Little Addis, occupies many of the medical buildings of the old Jeppe Street (now Rahim Moosa Street).
Almost obliterated in the foyer, by mats, socks, coffee grinders and grinder-holders, is a Cecily Nash mosaic, one arum section visible. The shopkeeper seems surprised that it’s there and then is eager to remove all his goods for us to see it properly.
We take the busy staircase and find, outside the lift doors on the first floor, a man with a scale, weighing anyone for a small fee.
I haven’t been here for four years and when I see all the white clothes, I laugh about my solo trip last time, my fruitless hunting for a completely plain white dress because a friend had said she got her enviably simple one here.
There were and still are hundreds of white dresses, all with some sort of colour feature.
We lunch on the veranda of a restaurant, two ever-beautiful Ethiopian coffeemakers against a stylised mural at its end. Our bargain-price injera platter features nine delicious wats, or thick sauces, plus the hot berbere and a generous avocado salad.
Behind me sit two Ethiopian businesswomen and I watch a large, smoking jar with glowing coals beneath delivered to them. The women invite us to taste their rich, sautéed and smoked beef-and-onion dish, shekla tibs.
On another floor we meet sassy little Chillo, the cat, his owner running a Haile Selassie memento and clothing shop.
We linger for irresistible smoke-roasted then freshly ground coffee, made by shy but sure Wenishad.
Kassa with 13-year dreads under his tall cap invites us to join him.
He’s entertaining, erudite company and won’t hear of our paying when we leave Majesty and its mesmerising, fragrant smokiness, mirror-shimmers off metals and its hospitable charms.