Zembaba: The Emperor’s New Food

Ethiopian

If you’re not North African or you don’t live in the Bloorcourt Village (Bloor and Dovercourt), I can pretty much guarantee you’ve never heard of this place. That’s a shame. This area is home to other Ethiopian restaurants the Queen of Sheba, Lalibela, and Nazareth, but this inconspicuous resto-bar deserves some attention. This is certainly the only place to find Roman Cha Cha Tibbs-lamb tibbs cooked according to Roman Azale’s parents’ recipe. Azale, the owner and chef, is the daughter of two of Emporer Haile Selassie’s chefs. So It’s not the Emporer’s clothes, but it is his food you get. This is a little less invasive, at least.

Fortunately, service is not so regal that you feel you should never speak unless spoken to or make eye contact. What separates Zembaba from other Ethiopian Restaurants is it’s casual atmosphere. This is not where you necessarily come for your first Ethiopian experience. It does not fill you with awe to walk into the restaurant and feel part of such an old and rich cultural heritage. The servers are not dressed in traditional clothes. The patrons next to you are relaxing with a beer, watching TV and enjoying good food. I wouldn’t expect to special-order Ethiopian coffee that would take hours to roast, because food comes quickly here. Heat and serve. It’s plentiful, it’s poured from a hot platter onto your table-sized piece of injera covered in salad and stewed vegetables. Everything is simple, functional, relaxed. Ethiopia’s equivalent of a diner.

It’s a wonderful thing. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you this. Now foodies will invade and soak up the atmosphere. They’ll take a proverbial piece of injera and swallow up all of what is so appealing about this restaurant. But I’m a hypocrite. I went there and loved it and it deserves to be frequented by others indiscriminately.

So,

Vegetarian Platter: $10.00 tax in.

Our server said it’s for one person but it was more than enough for two. We could barely finish it, and that only because we felt badly leaving anything so delicious. Unlike my first experience with Ethiopian food when I didn’t know if it was acceptable to take leftovers home (it is), this time it just wasn’t enough left to ask the server to bother. So it was worth a little bit of stuffing to fit it in. So that’s $5 each for too much good food.

There are slight, but important, differences between all Ethiopian restaurants. The use of butter for cooking, the combination of spices, the cuts of meat and how well-cooked they are, and of course, the injera. My first experience at Ethiopian House on Irwin Street in Toronto blew me away, as I had never had my meal presented to me on a platter of sponge-y flatbread, upon which different spicy and not-so-spicy concoctions were serially separated. A veritable palette of food. This was then served with another folded-over table-sized pancake of injera to tear apart and use as a utensil for the meat or vegetables. Eaten one mixed mouthful at a time, the novelty of the meal was wonderful. Meat was served on hot platters reminiscent of Korean hot plate and the contents were poured onto the table-sized injera laid out in front of you. The vegetables (the only other option being beef) were either lemony or spicy. Never sweet. The collard greens weren’t appealing to me. Berbere, a traditional hot spice, was interesting but I wasn’t about to go buy it and place it in the seat of honour in my spice shelf.

My second restaurant, M&B Yummy on Queen West, showed me that fava beans can be delicious and injera can be served torn up as part of the dish, as well as a utensil. It also showed me that vegan Ethiopian food is pretty normal, not like what we would think of as the difference between Canadian burgers or pastas, and what we would think of as more standard vegan fare in the Toronto area (like Hibiscus, Fresh, or the Urban Herbivore). Finally, it showed me that rushing is not something that should happen in the preparation or enjoyment of a meal. The chef/server (the only other person in the restaurant) took orders and then went to prepare all of our meals. Definitely not heat and serve. Some things were prepped, sure, but this was fresh. Not yet an ‘haute cuisine’, but conceptually far ahead of Western fast food.

By my fifth restaurant and my fourth vegetarian platter, I had learned that:

1. Spiced butter is a good idea to limit the bitter lemon flavour of the collard greens. Zembaba’s were the best.

2. Carrots and squash with turmeric are an incredible combination. I wonder how much of this cooking is influenced by the Indian population of Kenya to the south? Huge influx of immigrants to build a railroad (feel the strange comparison to the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the national guilt that came with it). Who started this cooking in a freshly-ground spice mixture idea? Did East Africa give to India or did India give to East Africa? Injera tastes nothing like naan or chapaati but the concept is very similar.

3. No two ‘vegetarian’ or ‘meat’ platters are created equal in terms of content and quality.

4. There is a fair bit of oil, or butter, or ghee involved in this kind of food, a lot like Indian dishes again, but the most delicious and unique injera is the part that has had a sauce scooped on top of it. The whole grain used for the bread, teff, originates in Africa and only now can be found in health food stores worldwide. You won’t find it in India. The oil and flavour seeps into the injera and once the sauce has been scooped from on top, the inundated bread dissolves in your mouth.

So what was so good about Zembaba’s? Shouldn’t I prefer the home-made, slow-cooked ‘healthier’ vegan fare at Y&B Yummy? Or Ethiopian House’s fancier setting? Or maybe Montreal’s Le Nil Bleu or the same company’s newest venture, Magdala? Nope. Zembaba’s food was the best Ethiopian that I’ve tasted. there were simple dishes with complex spices, just enough on every dish. It included a dish of red lentils, one of split peas, another of carrots, potato and squash, the lovely collard greens and a lettuce salad featuring slightly lemony greens that were a step up from iceberg. The good server even brought extra injera because we actually needed more.

It’s also not vegetarian, and when you stew meat for hours, all the flavour soaks into the sauce. Lentils don’t really do the same thing…Sorry, veggies. There menu has a lot of excellent vegetarian, but it has a lot of delicious lamb. Most of the other Ethiopian restaurants I have been to in the city feature either beef or vegetarian. I don’t know how traditional lamb is, especially since cows are the main livestock, but it’s a nice change. Either red meat served stewed or raw works perfectly under the expert spicing of the Zembaba’s royal chef. Besides, for only $2 extra, you can order the meat platter and get all the vegetable platter options added to it.