Ethiopian food SuperVegan - Bunna Café bringing new life to vegan-friendly, popping up all over North Brooklyn

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Ethiopian food is awesome, and it's one of the more inherently vegan-friendly traditional cuisines out there. But it's very rare to find a place specifically focussed on the v*gan side of Ethiopian food. Bunna Café does that and much more, with their pop-up events showcasing music, dancing, coffee ceremonies, and booze, as well as good eats. They've mostly focussed on North Brooklyn to date, but events elsewhere are certainly a possibility.

Upcoming Bunna Café events include dinners at Tradesman (222 Bushwick Ave, off the Montrose L) on August 26 (this weekend!!), at Alaska Bar (35 Ingraham St, off the Morgan L) on September 2, and at The West (379 Union Ave, off the Lorimer L) on September 8.

The only non-vegan thing they serve is the honey-based Tej wine. But they will be more than happy to hook us up with alternate drinks.



I asked Bunna Café's Sam Saverance a bunch of questions, and he was good enough to answer them:

SuperVegan: Who's behind Bunna Café and how did you get started? How long has Bunna Café been going? How long have you been cooking Ethiopian food and/or cooking professionally? Are you Ethiopian yourself?

Sam Saverance: 
Bunna Café is a three-person team composed of myself, a Texan, and two Ethiopians—Chuny Ali and a third partner who must remain nameless for now because he still has a competing restaurant day job. I am by profession a graphic designer and marketing/branding specialist. For the past four years I have diverged more from production work to branding and promoting African-based companies in order for them to be more successful in the global marketplace.

I spent some time in Ethiopia back in 2008 and immediately fell in love with the cuisine, visuals, and culture, especially in the way that food is considered an integral part of everyday life. My “nameless” partner hails from the Lalibela region, has spent many years managing restaurants and as a tour guide, and studies architecture at school here in NYC. He is extremely knowledgeable and effective in managing an event, and also has excellent taste in creating a memorable experience. We both met randomly a year ago and after chatting soon discovered that we had the same vision of creating a tasteful venue that reflected Ethiopia in a positive, effective way. Chuny joined us earlier this year. She is our master chef – the food she cooks is mind-blowingly tasty. Even the Ethiopians are mesmerized by the flavors she creates. She manages the kitchen and is incredibly efficient at it.

All in all the three of us complement each other to a tee. I work on branding, promoting, and event planning, nameless dude works on the managing of events and service, and Chuny manages the kitchen.

Tell us about your events. What's a vegan gonna get that they can't get by going to any old Ethiopian restaurant?


We decided to do vegan Ethiopian for a variety of reasons. First, it is extraordinarily tasty to the point that even a carnivore will forget that there is no meat involved (spoken from the mouths of true unabashed carnivores). Second, vegan Ethiopian is “naturally” vegan, in that you don’t have to substitute any animal product for a vegan option. You are eating a vegan dish that has been crafted and fine-tuned for centuries and is a very sophisticated meal palette-wise. The vegans I have spoken to are very appreciative of this. Thirdly, without meat the whole cooking process is much cleaner in the kitchen and on the shelf.

Other Ethiopian restaurants serve vegan Ethiopian food, but they mostly emphasize the meat dishes and therefore don’t place the same effort to make the vegan dishes palatable. Ours is tastier, heartier, healthier, and extremely colorful (we make a point of this).

Chuny is herself vegetarian so she knows very well how to make the dishes shine through.

Ethiopian cuisine is pretty vegan-friendly in general, right? Am I right that as long as we avoid the honey, everything that seems vegetarian is safe?


Ethiopian cuisine goes two ways—either very meaty or vegan. But yes, in general the veggie dishes are also vegan. Also, it is very close to being gluten-free. We are currently working on an injera recipe that does not use any wheat or other gluten product. The honey is mainly found in Tej—Ethiopian honey wine—so we are careful to point this out to those that consider honey to be non-vegan.

Are there many vegetarians or vegans in Ethiopia?

No. Not especially. Ethiopians love their Tibs (roasted beef). However for religious and lifestyle reasons meat is eaten sparingly. Most Ethiopians avoid pork completely and eat meat only on special occasions. All-in-all the Ethiopian palate is very nutritious.

I love coffee. And I especially love Ethiopian coffee. Coffee seems to be an important part of what you do. Tell us about that, please!

We consider coffee to be part of the aesthetic of our events, so we present it not as a product to sell but a part of the overall entertainment. Wherever we can, we perform the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. The roasting of the beans and the entire brewing process adds tremendously to the overall experience. And the final coffee (called “Bunna”) is delicious and has an amazingly intense yet sustaining effect.

What do other Ethiopian restaurants get right and get wrong? (Not asking you to name names, just curious what you do better!)


There are a few Ethiopian restaurants in NYC that I absolutely love. Good food, good atmosphere, savvy owners. But we feel like we are doing something completely different and catering to a different crowd. As a designer and marketer, my focus is to create something that will build a strong brand identity for us and also for Ethiopia and Africa. By doing so we can leverage our brand identity to promote other Ethiopian/African products and create more long-term prosperity for the continent.

We feel the best way to promote ourselves is to use the Ethiopian cuisine and culture in ways that pull it out of the typecast “kitschy” cultural experience and make it just a good experience in a variety of genres and facets. We are working with musicians from a variety of genres to do collaborative events. So far in our dinner parties we’ve had funk, blues, Sudanese acoustic music, and we’ve been talking with bands that range from klezmer to noise rock. Being a “travelling café”, we also gladly leave town. Bottom line is we want to show that Ethiopian cuisine works in a variety of traditional and non-traditional settings.

How close are you to opening a permanent restaurant, and where will it be?

We will definitely be opening a permanent venue, but probably not until early next year. We are looking for a spot in the East Williamsburg/Bushwick area. Until then we will undoubtedly be a presence. We are lining up events for as many weekends as we can muster and will continue to do off-site, travelling events when we have a permanent spot. We have a mailing list that people can get on by emailing me atsam@bunnaethiopia.net, and we also promote through Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

(all photos courtesy Bunna Café)

An ancient Ethiopian grain Tef grows in America

Injera is an Ethio­pian food staple grown from a grain called teff. A combination of factors has spurred the grain’s popularity and marketability in the United States.

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By Emily Wax, Monday, July 30, 1:37 AM

It’s almost midnight, but Zelalem Injera, an Ethio­pian bread factory housed in a cavelike Northeast Washington warehouse, is wide awake. As its 30-foot-long injera machine hums, Ethio­pian American businessman Kassahun Maru, 61, proudly explains that it cranks out 1,000 of the fermented Frisbee-shaped discs every hour for the region’s growing number of ethnic grocery stores, health food boutiques and Ethio­pian restaurants.

Injera — the Ethio­pian staple food that doubles as cutlery — is made from teff, a tiny grain ubiquitous in the Horn of Africa and until recently almost unknown elsewhere. But the teff that Zelalem Injera uses is grown in America. The 25-pound sacks stacked along the wall read “Maskal Teff: An Ancient African Grain. Made in Idaho.” Once solely grown in the rugged Ethiopian highlands, teff is popping up in the windswept fields of the American heartland.

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Waves of immigrants come to this country seeking a taste of home, but in doing so they change our tastes, too. Increasingly, cuisine can be a sort of international connective tissue, with people who may never travel to, say, India, now able to choose from five brands of naan in the ethnic foods aisle at Wegmans. The demand for teff has created a ripple effect that reaches from Addis Ababa to Boise to D.C.

When the first waves of Ethiopians began arriving in Washington after the 1974 Marxist coup, they had so few of the necessary supplies at hand that they made injera with Aunt Jemima pancake batter. “It tasted funny,” recalls Getachew Zewdie, 47, the owner of Dukem, one of U Street’s first Ethio­pian restaurants.

“There was just so much demand for real injera,” Zewdie says, standing amid sizzling skillets and bubbling vats of pungent yellow lentils and strips of meat tibs drizzled in rosemary sprigs and garlic. While injera is imported every day on Ethio­pian Airlines, it’s not as popular as the freshly made kind. The region’s injera industry — it’s baked at more than 50 locations in and around Washington — earns about $12 million a year with an estimated 4,000 packs sold per day, Maru estimates. Today, Zewdie buys his injera from Maru, and Maru buys his teff from the Teff Company in Caldwell, Idaho.

A growing market

A combination of factors has spurred the growth of the U.S. teff market. One is scarcity: The Ethiopian government routinely bans its export to protect prices from rising inside the country during lean seasons. Another is a shift in American dietary habits. The rise in Ethio­pian immigrants and the concomitant rise in the popularity of Ethio­pian food have increased demand, as has the surge in vegetarianism (a two-ounce serving of teff has as much protein as an extra-large egg). Yet another is the increased awareness of gluten allergies; gluten-free teff is a welcome alternative to wheat.

“It is a great crop,” says Don Miller, a plant breeder who works with teff at a seed research facility in West Salem, Wis. “And its uses are expanding all the time.”

A native of Texas, Miller, 60, sports a mustache and wears an array of turquoise rings. He has a PhD in agronomy and studies the use of teff as forage for horses and other animals. He received USDA grants in 2009 to 2010 to promote the Afric­an grain. “Maybe the Ethiopians like the taste a little more than I do,” he concedes, “but, you know, I really like it as a gluten-free chocolate cake.

Teff — which looks like wispy green wheat — is also being grown in Nevada, California and Texas, Miller says ­. “It’s just a really exciting time for teff.”

Homesick Ethiopians aren’t the only ones spurring the demand for teff. Ethio­pian food is becoming more mainstream despite its unfamiliar texture — a bit like baby food — and the injera itself, which is used to scoop it by hand. These days Ethio­pian cuisine can be found everywhere from U Street to Silver Spring to Alexandria­.­ “This was an inevitable consequence to more people catching on to the fact that Ethio­pian food is becoming the new Indian,” says Harry Kloman, author of “Mesob Across America: Ethiopian Food in the U.S.A.”

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Kloman, a lanky University of Pittsburgh journalism professor, reflects on the cuisine’s newfound popularity over an alfresco dinner at the Lalibela Ethio­pian restaurant in Logan Circle. “Now the world has discovered teff and injera — and it’s only a growing market.”

Teff gets competitive

Wayne Carlson, who operates the Teff Company in Idaho’s Snake River Valley, is considered the father of American teff. In the 1980s, he was living in Ethiopia working in a public health project on waterborne diseases.

“When I left I realized that I really missed the food,” says Carlson, who runs the company with his wife Elisabeth. “And I sort of thought, the West always goes to Africa and tells them things they ought to do. Well, Ethiopians also know what they’re doing, and maybe one of their cultural treasures can be transferred to us.”

He noticed that the geology and climate of Idaho were similar to those of Ethi­o­pia and, in 1984, he began importing and cultivating the seeds. He was alone for a while, but over the years he’s trained at least 50 other American farmers to grow teff, he says. “I thought it would be a natural fit, especially as the Ethio­pian community grew.”

Demonstrating just how competitive the industry is, Carlson pleaded guilty last spring of harassing a rival teff grower, Tesfa Drar, an Ethio­pian American and general manager of Teff Farms in Minnesota. Carlson was sentenced to a year’s probation in what the local media termed the “teff tiff.” The Carlsons say the charges were false and intended to destroy their business. Ethiopian American business leaders such as Maru hold Carlson in high regard, and view the incident as proof that everyone wants in on teff.

The science of injera

The massive machine at Zelalem Injera in Washington was invented by Kassahun Maru’s cousin, Wudneh Admassu, chairman of the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Idaho.

In Ethi­o­pia, women make injera over a wood fire by pouring the batter in a circular motion on a concave clay griddle. Concerned about the depletion of natural resources and the health of women who inhale the smoke, Admassu began planning a machine that could make injera in a different way. (One day, he hopes, they will be used in his native country.)

“I dabbled in a lab,” Admassu says. “My wife helped me since she knows many things that are not written. And after about three or four years I came up with this machine.”

I t’s anything but simple: Making injera is a delicate undertaking that includes a week-long, temperature-controlled fermentation process followed by careful measuring of the mixture’s viscosity “to monitor the consistency of the batter,” he says. The machine then drops, spreads and bakes the mixture, creating the flat 15-inch discs.

In August, Admassu will visit the Ethio­pian Heritage and Culture Camp in Harrisonburg, Va., to speak to adopted Ethiopian American children about his Willy Wonka-esque contraption. But they shouldn’t expect too much specificity, he says with a chuckle.

African leaders meet in Ethiopia on AU top job, continent's hotspots - International - World - Ahram Online

Leaders of African Union meet in Addis Ababa with numerous hot issues on agenda; elections for the bloc's top job, instability in Mali; violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo & the crisis between Sudan and S. Sudan

AFP , Sunday 15 Jul 2012

South Africa's President Zuma attends the leaders meeting at the African Union (AU) in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa. (Photo: Reuters)

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African Union leaders meeting in Addis Ababa Sunday will tackle the continent's hotspots at their biannual summit, even if elections for the bloc's top job are likely to overshadow the agenda after a deadlocked vote in January.
South Africa's Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma will challenge the sitting chairman of the commission, Jean Ping, after neither won the required two-thirds of the vote at the last summit, leaving Ping in the job for a further six months.
They will face off again on Sunday for the top job, which Ping has held since 2008.
Both candidates have issued strongly-worded public statements ahead of Sunday's vote.
Earlier this week, Ping dismissed reports from South African media that he was pulling out of the race to allow Dlamini-Zuma to stand unopposed, prompting the Southern African Development Community to accuse him of abusing AU resources in his election race.
Analysts say unwritten tradition is that continental powerhouses do not run for the post of AU Commission chairman -- leaving smaller nations to take the job -- and that South Africa's decision to override this rule has sparked bad feeling.
If no chair is selected this time around, Ping could legally be asked to stay on as leader until the next summit in January 2013.
Security issues are also a top priority at the gathering, with leaders focusing on instability in Mali, renewed violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the ongoing crisis between Sudan and South Sudan.
Following a Peace amd Security Council meeting Saturday, the AU demanded an end to "unacceptable interference" by Mali's ex-junta following a destabilizing coup in March and called for the former junta's dissolution.
The security arm of the pan-African bloc also called a meeting at heads of state level for regional powers seeking a solution to escalating violence in eastern DR Congo.
The council urged a speedy solution to outstanding conflicts between the Sudans at the end of the security meeting, which was attended by Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir and his southern countrpart Salva Kiir.
The conference is officially themed "boosting intra-Africa trade", the same as for the bloc's January summit.
Officials said they had decided to limit themselves to one theme per year rather than a new one each summit, as was previously the case.
The meeting is being held in the Ethiopian capital after Malawi's new president Joyce Banda refused to host Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on war crimes and genocide charges.

Planting Hope in Ethiopia | Care2 Causes

• by Emily L.
• June 6, 2012
• 9:00 am

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NOTE: This is a guest blog post from Evan Hunt, Development Administrator for Eden Reforestation Projects.

Ethiopia. What images are conjured up in your mind by the mention of this country? For many, it brings up images of desert. Or famine. Perhaps a bony little boy with skin stretched over his protruding ribs. Many people believe Ethiopia has always been in this miserly state. But nothing could be further from the truth. Ethiopia is known throughout the continent as The Roof of Africa because so much of the country is made up of high mountain plateaus, once lushly forested. Until as recently as the last century, the abundant rainfall from Ethiopia’s high plateaus supplied much of the river water from other Horn of Africa and East African nations.

So WHAT HAPPENED?

Over the past five decades, the overwhelming majority of the once abundant and beautiful highland and Rift Valley forests have been cut down. According to a recent survey, less than 3% of the forest remains intact. Of that remaining 3%, 15,000 additional acres are cut down each year. The forests are being decimated to make way for small plot farms and to satisfy the insatiable demand for charcoal used in cooking food and warming huts.

Unfortunately for Ethiopians, destroying trees means destroying a whole lot more than the availability of shade. The picture below illustrates the effects of deforestation.

One Ethiopian, Tesfaye Shandolah, has dedicated his life to reversing this devastating cycle. At the risk of butchering his story, I invite you to allow him to tell it to you in his own words.

Tesfaye’s dedication is beginning to pay off. Since he shared his story with us five years ago, he and the others you see in the video, along with thousands of others, have planted over 15 million trees. The impact of their efforts is already clearly evident. Wildlife is returning in droves. Farmland that had become useless for growing crops is fertile again. Clean sources of water are returning as rivers that had run dry are beginning to flow again.

Tesfaye has said he will continue to be a planter of hope for his country as long as he lives. We join him in hoping that photos of starving Ethiopian children will be a nightmare confined to history books.

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/planting-hope-in-ethiopia.html#ixzz1x5h2r4q5

Starting a Children’s Home in Ethiopia The Santa Barbara Independent

Courtesy Photo

Ian and Brittany Bentley in Ethiopia meeting with a woman who helped care for their daughter Selah.

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Starting a Children’s Home in Ethiopia

Santa Barbara’s Bentley Family Bought One-Way Tickets

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Saturday, June 2, 2012

by OLIVIA CVITANIC

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Ian and Brittany Bentley adopted their Ethiopian-born daughter, Selah, in 2011, but upon returning home to normality, they soon felt that helping just one child in need was not enough. The families, including their two biological sons, have purchased one-way tickets and will be moving to Ethiopia on June 13 to partner with another family to run a children’s home for orphans and destitute children.

During their adoption journey, the Bentleys became involved with starting a non-profit organization called Gold Coast OrphanAlliance after realizing the lack of support and information for families going through the adoption process. To allow the area’s adoptive parents to connect, the Bentleys started a support group within their organization. But after finally receiving Selah, they realized the impact that they could have on other families and children if they took more drastic measures.

Ian attributes his strong sense of faith — as well as his love for his new daughter — as the catalysts for the life-changing step of moving his family across the world to help those in need.

“Every day we are bombarded with statistics about how many poor and orphaned children there are in the world, and we as a family decided we wanted to put our faith into action and do something about it,” said Ian. “After we adopted Selah, all those statistics suddenly had a face, and we realized our journey wasn’t ending with just bringing Selah home. We wanted to share our love even farther by starting the children’s home.”

No Ordinary Love Ministries Children’s Home currently has a license to care for up to 30 children; however, there is a greater desire for more sufficient funding. The home will be in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and will be open to a wide variety of children, including those afflicted with HIV/AIDS and malnourishment, those abused or abandoned, and those at risk for child trafficking and prostitution. With the ultimate goal of having the children reconcile and reintegrate back with family members or undergo domestic adoption, the kids at the home will be provided with education, three full meals, hygienic supplies, and a clean, safe living environment provided by caregivers. The Bentleys will be living near the home and giving continual care to the children.

In addition to the children’s home, the Bentleys are looking into what they can do to help the kids learn vocational skills and how to care for themselves financially. They will be partnering with the organization fashionABLE, a non-profit that provides former prostitutes with the opportunity to sustain themselves and their families by making scarves to sell. The scarves, which have gained recent popularity after being worn in the most recent season of The Bachelorette, give women jobs and an opportunity to support themselves away from street life or abusive husbands.

To read more about the Bentleys’ journey, check out their website at steadfastlove.org.

A worthwhile link between Bath and Ethiopia | This is Bath

Malcolm Ward's letter headed "Does Bath need more twinning"? (Bath Chronicle May 3) makes both interesting and surprising reading.

Interesting, because at least as a tax paying Bathonian his reaction to twinning shows that he keeps abreast of the work of Bath's council. Surprising, because as an erudite Bathonian, while he knows that Ethiopia is "poor", he's got the location wrong – Ethiopia is in east and not north Africa.

And need I remind him that Ethiopia is no stranger to Bathonians?

Was it not the last King of "poor Ethiopia", Haile Selassie, who donated Fairfield House on the outskirts of Bath to elderly Bathonians as a token of his appreciation for the hospitality accorded to him and his family during fascist Italy's occupation of Ethiopia in the Second World War?

Is his reaction to be taken as Bathonians' way of saying thank you to Haile Selassie, and by extension, to Ethiopia?

Malcolm Ward has also fallen prey to an anachronistic view of Ethiopia which is synonymous with poverty, famine and conflict, whereas, in actual fact, we are a nation which has built a democratic and economically fast-growing country on the embers of a brutal military dictatorship and a famine of "Biblical proportion".

Besides, twining is not a one-way street, but a symbiotic relationship offering a win-win situation to both parties. It is my hope that the anticipated twining between Hawassa and Bath will usher new opportunities for Bath's business community to invest in Ethiopia's market.

It's high time that Bathonian's revamped the historic link with Ethiopia.

DILWENBERU NEGA Chippenham Road London

Jennifer Lopez | Jennifer Lopez Fell In Love With Ethiopian Twin Babies | Contactmusic

Picture: Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz of “What to Expect When You're Expecting” make appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” on Tuesday, May 15th. Jennifer and Cameron clear up the rumors that they didn’t get along on set. Plus, Ellen asks Jennifer if she will return to “American Idol. And, Jennifer s....

Jennifer Lopez Fell In Love With Ethiopian Twin Babies

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The Ethiopian twins who play Jennifer Lopez's adopted baby in newmovie What To Expect When You'Re Expecting were orphans fighting for life just eight months before they hit the big screen with the star.

Lopez fell in love with the lucky African babies, and their adoptive parents who went to Ethiopia looking for a baby girl and came back with twin boys.

The actress/singer says, "They were just so lovable; they were love bunnies. They were two Ethiopian twins and their parents wanted to adopt a girl, so they went to Ethiopia and these two little twin boys were days old and very ill and super skinny.

"They had a little bit of a rough patch in the beginning but the parents fell in love with them and brought them back to America. They were looking for a little girl and came back with two little boysand it was just beautiful.

"Then eight months later they were in a movie with us and they were really special little babies."