In Ethiopia, coffee starts with pale green coffee beans. The beans are washed in preparation to be roasted as neighbors and friends gather in whatever house is making coffee that day. Over coffee, life is discussed. Within this daily community gathering, people talk about what they need to do and problems to be solved.
Feben Teffera, one of the owners of Ebony Ethiopian Cuisine, sought to build a space around this concept infused with community, comfort, and a recognition that food is the primary connection to other human beings.
The process, from roasting the beans, to grinding and brewing, and finally enjoying the beverage, can sometimes take up to two hours. If one house prepares coffee today, their neighbor will prepare it the next.
Similarly, meals follow a communal structure. It’s not atypical to sit down for a meal in Ethiopia and be offered to share a neighbor’s dish if their food arrived first.
Sustenance — food, coffee, tea, is a tool for connection and community.
Ebony Ethiopian Cuisine is the only African restaurant in San Luis Obispo. With every meal Teffera and her team serve to their loyal customer base they seek to impart a sense of comfort and belonging. Their commitment to offering meals that are vegan, gluten free, and nourishing — as well as being a space for community and connection, make them a popular spot with locals and visitors alike.
Ebony has been operating from the Network shopping center on Higuera for the past year and a half. After being unable to renew their current lease which is up in December, the restaurant is now looking for a new place to settle down.
Although Ebony faces uncertainty, Teffera and her team are hopeful that they will find a new location for Ebony that will be even better than the current space. Teffera is intent on maintaining the spirit of Ebony, and adding little elements that enrich the restaurant along the way, and the community that she and her team have built has her back.
“The community has been so supportive and it seems like everyone is looking on our behalf,” she said. “Maybe that’s why I am very hopeful.”
Teffera, who grew up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, was sitting in a coffee shop when the spark that would become Ebony first materialized. Teffera had just finished reading a motivational novel when she picked up the phone to call her aunt Martha Taezaz.
As Teffera recounts, Ebony started with a simple question over the phone, “I’m thinking about opening an Ethiopian restaurant. Are you willing to partner with me and move here?”
Teffera had always wanted to open a restaurant, but it wasn’t until this moment, on the phone with her aunt Martha, that her dream started to feel more like reality.
Taezaz, who was also born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has been cooking her whole life. She decided to move from Virginia to partner with Teffera and start Ebony.
With Taezaz being on board with Teffera’s proposition, it was now only a matter of building the team. Teffera called up a few more people.
Teffera’s aunt, Helen Abarha, a chef in New Jersey, agreed to share recipes and knowledge about the logistics of running a kitchen. Teffera’s best friend, a silent partner, agreed to handle Ebony’s finances and accounting.
Everyone was all in.
Teffera recalls weekly zoom calls and lengthy conversations through which the four women discussed the prospect of opening a restaurant. It was a first for all of them, so conversations like these were essential to Teffera and her team to figure out how they wanted to make Ebony a reality.
The first iteration of Ebony Ethiopian Cuisine was a takeout business out of Benny’s kitchen near the airport in San Luis Obispo. After a brief stint at Benny’s, the four women moved into Kitchen Terminal where they offered Ethiopian takeout for two years.
Now, you can find Ebony tucked in the back of the Network Shopping Center on Higuera.
(Teffera recalled falling asleep one night after getting the keys to Ebony and envisioning the space with a vibrant orange wall.)
A typical day at Ebony Ethiopian Cuisine starts at 6:30 a.m. Feben Teffera and her aunt Martha Taezaz come into the kitchen, turn on some music, and spend the better part of the morning preparing food before Ebony opens at 11 a.m.
The food served at Ebony is prepared daily. Injera, a staple in Ethiopian cuisine made with fermented teff, is prepared multiple times a day. This can be time consuming but Teffera wants to ensure that everyone gets fresh Injera, no matter what time they dine at Ebony.
Opposed to eating with a knife or a spoon, Injera, which is naturally gluten free, is the vehicle that Ethiopian food is eaten with. A piece is taken and used to scoop up whatever variation of sauce one orders.
One of the sauces available at Ebony is called Spicy Misir Wat which is made with primarily red lentils, onions, and a traditional Ethiopian spice called berbere.
Since the beginning, Teffera committed to serving food that is clean and healthy. Growing up in Ethiopia, Teffera recalled a culture where “everyone made everything” she said. Eating healthy wasn’t a lifestyle that people would choose to adopt, it was inherent.
When Teffera thought about the type of food she wanted to serve at Ebony, she prioritized food that made customers feel good.
“You can’t find clean food from beginning to end,” Teffera said. “That was my frustration. I wanted to create a place where you don’t have to think about what goes in your food, it’s all clean.”
In the beginning stages of Ebony, Teffera and her team had difficulty deciding what type of oil to cook with. Seed oils are cheap which make them a cost effective option for restaurants, but it didn’t sit right with Teffera to use something that she wasn’t comfortable consuming.
Teffera and her business partners decided on using cold pressed avocado oil, despite the extra expense it would incur. Ensuring the food that Ebony serves is beneficial to the community is important for Teffera and her team.
“The whole concept is to just interest people into eating healthy,” Teffera said. “I used to always say when we first opened, when people leave, if you felt great after eating our food, let the feeling bring you back. Just notice how you feel after, if you feel good, come back. Food should be something that raises your spirit, your mind, everything. You shouldn’t feel bloated or tired.”
Ebony is vegan, gluten free, and seed oil free, making them an attractive option to people who have dietary restrictions.
“We get people who like Ethiopian food, we get people who like to eat healthy, we get vegan people, we get a variety of people.” Teffera said. “Everyone wants to eat healthy but you assume healthy doesn’t taste good and then you come here and you’re like, healthy can be amazing, vegan can be amazing.”
Teffera’s favorite thing about Ebony is getting to describe to people what Ethiopian food is. Many of Ebony’s first-time customers have never tried Ethiopian food before and their excitement and willingness to try the cuisine in turn makes Teffera excited.
Through the food at Ebony, and the space that the restaurant inhabits, Teffera is trying to cultivate a feeling that customers want to return to.
With its vaulted ceilings, pops of color, and hum of casual conversation, Ebony feels instantly inviting.
The space on Higuera is much different than the commercial kitchen, but it was a welcome change for Teffera. The whole point of moving into a bigger space, she recalls, was so people could walk into Ebony and feel good.
“Everybody feels like it’s their place,” Teffera said. “People are so comfortable here. People just feel like it’s their home, which is what we were trying to create, really good food and a place you come to hangout where you end up meeting somebody you know.”
Community and curiosity are infused into the very core of Ebony and how it is run. Teffera wanted to curate a space where people feel comfortable to not only have a meal but to relax and enjoy the space.
Scattered throughout Ebony are books for people to read, handmade goods and decorations from Morocco and Ethiopia, and intentional seating that encourages conversation with strangers.
“If you’re not hungry, just have really good tea. If you don’t want tea, have good coffee. You can come to just read a book, you can come to have coffee, you can come to eat, you can come to just sit around” Teffera says.
Teffera wants customers to spend as much time as they want in the space, and to come back.
“The highest percentage of our customers are returning customers. Which gives that feeling of home, because we know everybody. It’s rare that we don’t know who walks in. There’s a lot of familiar faces” Teffera says.
Lena Kimura, a fourth year Biology major at Cal Poly, was working in the Network shopping center on Higuera at Proof and Gather when she became acquainted with Ebony.
Proof and Gather and Ebony shared a common bathroom that was accessed through Ebony, so Kimura would often walk through the restaurant and notice regular customers.
“I would see a lot of the same customers in the restaurant, people not only eating there but also hanging out at her [Teffera’s] counter and talking to her because they were friends or because they were regulars. Any sort of business that fosters that friendliness of a customer and a business owner is beneficial for the community because it establishes a meeting place” Kimura says.
Kimura, who has been a vegetarian for most of her life, appreciates Ebony’s role in the community amongst those with dietary restrictions.
Some of her favorite dishes on the menu are the Injera and the mushrooms. The mushrooms–Enguday Tibs– is a dish consisting of portobello mushrooms sauteed with onions, garlic, bell peppers, and rosemary, according to Ebony’s website.
As for the future of the restaurant, Teffera hopes to keep expanding the community that makes up Ebony. Hosting musicians, authors, or groups that align with the mission of Ebony is a priority of Teffera’s moving forward.
Teffera plans to continue expanding the gluten free options that Ebony serves and possibly expand their hours to include breakfast with pastries and coffee.
She also hopes to restart a program that Ebony instated at their commercial kitchen where they helped connect single mothers with meals from Ebony. This program was on a nomination basis, and largely organized over the restaurant’s Instagram DM’s.
“I always said, ‘I don’t need to know why this person needs the meal, they need it,” Teffera says. “I didn’t want it to be based on, “she struggling,” that’s just putting somebody on this spot.”
It was important to her for this program to not spotlight the women who needed support or place undue pressure upon them. All Teffera wanted was for people to “nominate” a single mother in need and she would then contact them asking if they are interested in picking up a meal.
At the end of the day, working at Ebony with her aunts and best friend is difficult, but rewarding. The love and respect they have for each other carries them through the work day and helps them maintain their business.
On Sundays, the staff at Ebony gather together for one big meal to talk about their lives and reconnect after the work week. Teffera describes the relationship she has with the team at Ebony as “one big happy family.”
“We get along, we love what we do,” Teffera said. “It’s so much fun.”
Ebony Ethiopian Cuisine can be found on Instagram @ebony_slo.