#sambusa

Aunties making sambusa (2023), oil on water colour paper if you like this stuff you can see more of my here (shop)

ETHIOPIA

WHERE: Awaze Cuisine (904 NE Maynard Rd, Cary, NC 27513)

When I went down to Raleigh last year (seriously, my project posts have to come out in a more timely manner), my friends down there loved the idea of my Traveling By Tastebuds project, so Hayden decided we should try the Ethiopian restaurant called Abyssinia before we went to the movies that night. She heard it was really good but had never been.

We tried all the appetizers including the beef sambusa, lamb sambusa and catagna first. Very good little pastry dishes. And bread made from a sour dough (is that where they get the term sourdough bread?). Then came the entree.. All the other diners had these giant communal plates and we were kind of clueless when it came to Ethiopian eating (seriously, all three of us had one of those 'what am I even looking at??' moment when we checked out the menu), but eventually Hayden just had to ask the waiter, "What are they eating over there? How do we order THAT?" The waiter said he would take care of us and walk us through everything. He then brought out piles of doro wat, kay wat, and goat curry (all different sorts of chicken, beef and goat) and dumped them on this giant plate as big as a pizza pan of injera bread. And we sat there for a long time, scooping up sauces and dishes with the bread until we totally forgot about seeing the movie and eventually had to call the movie theater to reschedule our tickets (on a side note, I didn't even realize you could reschedule movie tickets until that evening). Having only met Hayden and Matt in person that day (though we had talked on the Internet for years), this was such a fun communal meal that really cemented our ties with one another-- and when I think of African eating, that's one of the biggest draws and benefits to it: the sense of community and togetherness.

PS. I forgot to add the fact that they garnished one of the curries with a hardboiled egg. And I was remarking to Hayden that it's the second time that an african meal I've eaten at a restaurant was garnished with an egg. Like... BOOM... egg! It's garnish! I still find that strange, but hey, hardboiled eggs are delicious and should be on the top of more things.