Habesha Café

Visiting Habesha Café in Glenwood’s bustling Helen Joseph Road feels like being welcomed into an inviting, spice-scented Ethiopian home. The venue is in fact a converted house, with old Berea yellowwood floors; high ceilings, and generous bay windows. Warm Durban sunshine streams past hessian shades, colourful cotton curtains and across casually scattered low seats. Chairs are arranged around tables, or informally into circles, surrounding the brightly coloured woven stands that carry the communal plates which Ethiopians traditionally eat from.

The term ‘Habesha’ is a word used among Ethiopians and Eritreans to refer to themselves, in a unifying fashion rather than delineating groups along tribal or regional lines (check out the hashtag #HabeshaProblems on Twitter for a humorous take on traditionally strict Ethiopian parents with high expectations). No Habesha problems here, though – on arrival, you will be ushered inside by the gracious, soft-spoken hosts Biniam and Fev, who treat you more like returning friends than patrons.

If you’ve eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant before, you will have a good idea of what to expect from the menu – a variety of chicken, beef or lamb ‘wots’ (spicy stews) as well as a good selection of vegetarian dishes, featuring split peas, lentils and chickpeas. The traditional spice mix ‘berbere’ appears in many of the dishes, and carries the warm familiar flavours of chili peppers, garlic and ginger, as well as others that may be harder to place: korarima (the dried seeds of a ginger which grows wild in the horn of Africa), nigella and fenugreek.

Select a variety of dishes, place your order, and soon it arrives, each wot presented in a separate bowl, and resting on a white tablecloth of injera, the distinctive flat bread which serves as both plate and utensil. In case you run out of bread with which to eat your meal, a bowl full of extra injera is served alongside, in neat little rolls. Injera is made from a fermented dough and has a lemony, slightly sour taste – Habesha’s version is quite mild, however, with just a hint of acid.

On our visit, we demolished a combination of tibs firfir (cubed mutton curry tossed through with injera), shiro wot (split peas) and misir wot (lentils). The lentils were served in a wooden bowl that seemed to add to the flavour. Eating with our hands, the injera acted as an artist’s palette, each dish a flavourful colour, to be mixed, swirled and recomposed into a personal work of art. Delicious, edible art.

Forget the tired dessert options of ice-cream, crème brûlée or chocolate mousse. Here in little Ethiopia, meals are concluded with a generous bowl of sweet and sticky pitted dates. Fev brings us black coffee, served in a long-necked round-bottomed clay jebena and poured into small pottery cups. The coffee is served with freshly popped popcorn, which goes surprisingly well with the dates. We also tried the mint tea, flavoured with fresh mint leaves and brown sugar.

Habesha Café is not licensed, so bring your own bottle, or try their fresh juices like the mango and avocado. Dishes are very reasonably priced, and our meal for two including three wots, drinks, tea, coffee and dates came to just over R200.