Karelia = far eastern Finland and the ethnically Finnish areas across the border in Russia.
1 Like
A friend posted pictures of an Abyssinian restaurant in San Diego. The dishes look Ethiopian, and the small Wiki entry says that that injira, that spongy pancake, is a staple. Google returns a closed South Bay place, Abyssinia, and then links to several Ethiopians. ![Abyssinian|700x525]
(upload://eTgXYZjSnxEclvsU7zjsZ42W9Ys.jpg)
1 Like
In Santa Rosa, My Abbysisinia
http://www.my-abyssinia.com/menu.html
It’s very good. I went with a group a few years ago and we tried meat as well as vegetarian. All of us enjoyed it.
1 Like
Is Abyssinian cuisine distinct from Ethiopian, and if so how and why?
Northern Ethiopian Amharic (and I believe Tigrean) speaking people in Ethiopia refer to themselves as “Habesha”, which was historically westernized as Abbysinia to refer to the people and country. Since most Bay Area Ethiopian immigrants, if not US in total, are Habesha I don’t think referring to the food as Asbyssinian would provide anything different.
There are some regional variations in foods and staple goods in Ethiopia, but I don’t believe that’s represented in Bay Area restaurants thought the dish names may vary.
My Abyssinia’s menu looks typical of local ethiopian restaurant, and with the exception of Doro wot, which is eaten mostly at holidays, is typical of what I ate in Addis Ababa and Tigray
1 Like
Café Ohlone is scheduled for an August opening at 2430 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, inside University Press Books.
I’m not sure if Ohlone food falls into the category of “national cuisine” for purposes of this thread but it certainly is “underrepresented.”
photo below: Venison backstrap cooked with bay laurel and yerba buena, blackberries, mushrooms and bitter greens. Photo: Mak-‘amham
excerpt from about middle of article:
Many Ohlone ingredients are used in various ways in different dishes. Acorns are used to make soup (paamu) and flatbread (yuu-pitlaš). Bay laurel (sokoote) flavors roasted meats, sauces and stews. Yerba buena (čawrišim), which belongs to the mint family, is used as an herb to flavor dishes and an ingredient for tea. Medina said the repetition of ingredients has a purpose. “So much of our culture is based on pattern, repetition. This is a way that our culture become cemented and solidified in our identities.”
Café Ohlone
grand opening slated for August
Café Ohlone by Mak-‘amham will be inside University Press Books
2430 Bancroft Way (between Dana and Telegraph), Berkeley
will be open three days a week, most likely 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Thursday through Saturday
2 Likes
Fri-Sun popup in SOMA. Lagos flavors its said.
1 Like
Yazzie, who is from a Navajo reservation in Four Corners, N.M., says he learned how to cook from his grandmother. His recalls first time making fry bread was when he was 5. “Everything I’m doing is what my grandma taught me. It’s all instincts. It tends to take care of me well.”
Tacos are $6 with half off Tuesdays
Rocko’s Tacos at The Lodge
3758 Piedmont Ave., Oakland
on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday evenings
3 Likes
excerpts:
At a recent tasting, Vincent Medina and partner Louis Trevino served up Ohlone dishes including acorn bisque, elderberry sorrel salad and soft-boiled quail eggs with bayshore salt.
…
“I just had smoked venison, and that was really good,”
[tribal member Johnny] Dominguez said with a smile.
Bayshore salt? As in the salt from our bay? I thought our stuff wasn’t very good.
excerpts:
Gold Rush History
Believe it or not, the Bay Area may not be what it is today without its salt. Harvesting salt from the Bay dates back to Native American groups like the Ohlone, but demand really picked up in the 1850s.
“As people migrated from the east to the west, mostly around the discovery of gold, there was a need for salt,” says Mapelli. “Everybody traveled with salt.”
Without refrigeration, salt was how people preserved food.
“It was almost worth its weight in gold,” he says.
1 Like
The Bay was probably way cleaner in the 1850’s, before people started living around it and dumping all the runoff- gasoline, Roundup, garbage, etc. into the bay. GIven how cheap salt is sold these days, I have a hard time thinking they would do much ‘purification’ before selling.
re Bevri I think it’s still the only Georgian in the Bay Area. I was looking around for adjaruli (acharuli) khachapuri since I became instantly addicted to it in late September when I had it at Kargigogo in Portland. I must say I’m a bit thrown by the price though. $18 for a cheese pastry seems high. But then again I’m noticing that all the prepared food prices seem to have shot up since our last SFBA visit four years ago. It was never a cheap place to dine out but… and of course once you add in our horrible exchange, that cheese pastry, however large, rings in at around CAD $23. Ouch. For comparison it is $12 (CAD $16) at Kargigogo and (wait for it) $7 at our local Georgian outlet in Richmond BC, Lamajoun. The latter two are both dinner plate size, BTW.
1 Like
Not any more. Just a few months Bevri opened, there’s now another Georgian food truck just south of Palo Alto in Mountain View. Adjaruli at $8.25. Haven’t tried. But price is certainly not bad.
1 Like
There is a guam-anian place in Fremont, Booniepepper. It’s causal counter lunch, reminds me of L&L BBQ ( perhaps because they are both small islands ), and I thought it was interesting but not worth recommending.
3 Likes
Looks like it’s Palo Alto for a mini-Georgian boom! That $8.25 price is a lot more realistic, even with the exchange! Thank you.
Luke Tsai in the December 2018 issue of San Francisco Magazine:
excerpts:
…
When Café Ohlone starts its regular hours in early 2019, it will be the first restaurant of its kind in the Bay Area—the only place where diners can enjoy acorn bread, venison stew, and other traditional Ohlone dishes while sipping teas made with local herbs such as yerba buena and black sage.For now, the café is hosting weekly pop-ups to give eager customers a preview of things to come. During one October session, the $20 tasting menu included cold acorn soup—velvety smooth and surprisingly refreshing—and a spongy, squishy bread made from chia seeds. There were hazelnuts served two ways: roasted and sprinkled with salt from San Francisco Bay, and ground into a luxurious peanut butter–like paste.
…
Many of the ingredients for the October pop-up were gathered by hand: salt from the bay; purple yerba buena from Halkin, the name Ohlones use for a portion of the East Bay encompassing San Leandro and parts of Oakland; and valley acorns from Saklan, the area north of the Berkeley Hills.
…
Café Ohlone
2430 Bancroft Way (near Dana St.)
Berkeley
lunchtime tastings and biweekly Saturday dinners
hosting pop-ups with $20 tasting menu with a vegan option $15
regular hours in early 2019
A tasting plate at one of Café Ohlone’s preview pop-ups, highlighted by a bowl of venison stew.
3 Likes
Available until
11/09/2021
AIRDATES
- WednesdayDec12 8:30 PM PT
KCET-HD
- ThursdayDec13 8:00 PM PT
KCETLINK
- SaturdayDec15 12:30 AM PT
KCET-HD
Thanks for the links–walking by Musical Offering occasionally to figure out when the Cafe Ohlone pop-ups were was not helping me figure anything out. Looks like there is one tomorrow from 1-3.
1 Like
