Dashen's Ingredients for Success: Authentic Ethiopian Food, Hard Work

Dashen's Ingredients for Success: Authentic Ethiopian Food, Hard Work

Dozens of Restaurants and Cafes Will be Participating in New Brunswick's Restaurant Week

Put down that fork. Here’s the proper way to eat "awaze tibs," a spicy stew that can be made with beef, lamb or chicken.

Tear off a piece of injera, a spongy bread with a sour-like taste, and use it to pick up pieces of the meat and the side dishes.

You have to work a little to make these bite-sized sandwiches, but hard work has always been as much an ingredient of Dashen’s success as the cardamom, ginger and red pepper that the restaurent owner, Tsigereda Lemlemayhu, imports from her native Ethiopia.

For a woman who started off preparing food made with family recipes she brought with her from Ethiopia and whose initial clients were a handful of friends and neighbors, Dashen at 88 Albany St. represents the sum of long nights, hard sacrifices, risks and recipes that have been perfected over time.

The tales of Lemlemayhu’s hard work – seen by the family as a distinctly Ethiopian trait – are legendary in the family. There was the time she put in a 15-hour shift to bake 1,000 servings of injera for a wedding, and then there were the times she prepared a huge lunch after attending all-night services for Ethiopian Epiphany.

“Having that spirit of making food and nurturing people, I’m so glad that it turned into a business where she can showcase her culture and that personality across the world,” said Feven Brook Kebede, Lemlemayhu’s niece, said.

Dashen will be one of about 25 restaurants, bars and cafés participating in New Brunswick’s Restaurant Week when it kicks off Saturday, July 13.

The prix fixe menus, free appetizers and desserts, and reduced entre prices that will be offered by many of the establishments in City Center are an invitation to foodies everywhere hungry for fine fare.

Dashen will be offering 10% off lunch orders of more than $50, and $15 off dinner orders of more than $100.

“Restaurant Week is great because the summer can be slow sometimes,” Lemlemayhu said. “People are away and the Rutgers students are off. But with Restaurant Week, we get a lot of people who come in for the very first time. It is very exciting to welcome them.”

The food at Dashen, whether it is doro wot or kitfo or any of the other ethnic dishes, can be adjusted for those with a not-so-spicy palate.

Opening a restaurant was not the plan when Lemlemayhu arrived in the United States in 1991.

When she emigrated with her husband, Alemayehu Hailu, she started going to school with the goal of becoming a nurse. She changed gears after her son, Matthew, was born.

She had a lot of help opening Dashen. An Ethiopian restaurant owner in New York invited her to work and learn the ins and outs of running a restaurant. Her husband helps keep the books. A family friend, Tefera Landis, urged her to buy this spot on Albany Street when it became available.

It was a small space – about 50 seats – that Lemlemayhu expanded just before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.

If there was a silver lining to the health crisis, it was that take out orders skyrocketed. Lemlemayhu says with pride that even during a pandemic, her customers couldn’t live without this Ethiopian cuisine.

There’s a wide array of people who dine at Dashen, ranging from professionals from Johnson & Johnson to Rutgers students to workers taking a lunch break from hanging dry wall at the under-construction Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Hospital.

They’re all transported to a different world when they step into Dashen, whose walls are decorated with pieces of artwork depicting the Ethiopian culture and experience. Elsewhere, there’s a waist-high knitted piece that, when its top is removed, can be used by diners as a tray.

“Sometimes what I forget is that when people come here, they don’t eat all the time something like misir wot, which is a red lentil stew with onions, ginger and garlic,” Matthew said. “People try it, and they’re amazed and I have to say, ‘Oh, people don’t eat this every day.’ Every time someone from another culture tries the food, I get reminded of why I want to share it with others.”

Restaurant Week in New Brunswick runs July 13-27. In addition to several establishments offering special deals, there will be a contest and rewards in the form of gift certificates for dining out during the week.

Story & Photo By: Chuck O'Donnell