Why this Harlem chef is the queen of Ethiopian-Jewish delicacies – The Ahead

Beejhy Barhany’s Tsion Cafe is positioned in a brownstone that used to deal with Jimmy’s Rooster Shack, an eatery and jazz joint the place Artwork Tatum used to play. Photograph by Sam Lin-Sommer

By Sam Lin-Sommer
July 21, 2025

In New York Metropolis, the place residences are crowded side-by-side and top-to-bottom like so many Jenga blocks, histories usually overlap. I’m standing in entrance of a stately brownstone in Harlem that used to deal with Jimmy’s Rooster Shack, an eatery and jazz joint the place Artwork Tatum used to play, and the place Charlie Parker, Malcolm X, and Redd Foxx all labored within the Forties.

Right this moment, that exact same area is residence to Tsion Cafe, the one restaurant in New York Metropolis serving Ethiopian Jewish meals. I’ve an appointment to prepare dinner with the restaurant’s proprietor, Beejhy Barhany. Her work as a chef, author, and organizer has taught Individuals that the tales of Africans and Jews have finished greater than coincide over time. They’re inseparable.

I knock on the door of the backyard unit, and Barhany solutions the door. She wears a darkish gingham hoodie over a black t-shirt with a golden decal of Africa. The restaurant is slim and deep, its dimly-lit partitions painted orange and lined with colourful artwork. Barhany smiles and holds out her hand. “Beejhy,” she says, saying her title just like the letters “b” and j.”

Barhany grew up in Ethiopia within the Beta Israel group, a gaggle of Jews that has lived there since historical occasions, and numbers round 168,000 in Israel and a pair of,500 in america. In 1980, when Barhany was a toddler, she and her household left for Sudan on foot in the course of the night time, fleeing political violence. Two years later, they had been smuggled into Israel, the place Barhany spent a lot of her childhood.

In 1996, after serving within the Israeli Protection Forces, Barhany travelled across the Americas, and fell in love with New York Metropolis. She moved to New York in 1999, and to Harlem in 2000.

Barhany shortly turned a cultural ambassador. In 2003, she established the Beta Israel of North America Cultural Basis, which celebrates Ethiopian Jewish tradition by way of cooking lessons, Shabbat dinners and movie screenings at locations just like the Schomburg Heart for Analysis in Black Tradition and the 92nd Road Y.

And in 2012, Barhany opened Tsion Cafe to inform her group’s story by way of meals. The restaurant includes a menu rooted in Beta Israel cooking, however with influences from Barhany’s many properties and travels. Guests can begin a meal with plantain chips; eat spiced lentils for a foremost course; and end with Yemenite malawach bread with date syrup.

This spring, Barhany revealed her first cookbook, Gursha: Timeless Recipes for Modern Kitchens, from Ethiopia, Israel, Harlem, and Beyond, with Elisa Ung. Like her restaurant, the ebook spans Ethiopian classics, like yellow cut up pea stew, and dishes rooted in different cuisines, like Ethiopian-and-Yemenite spiced schnitzel.

The ebook is filled with the tales of Beta Israel who’ve crossed continents and overcome hardships with the assistance of group and meals. After Barhany’s aunt Avejo Aklum accomplished a harrowing journey to Israel, she struggled to seek out spices, teff flour for injera, or inexperienced espresso beans for the Ethiopian espresso ceremony, a three-times-a-day custom that entails roasting, grinding, and brewing uncooked beans by hand. So she based a enterprise that sources Ethiopian cooking components. Barhany’s recipe for dabo, a wealthy Shabbat bread, is customized from Aklum’s.

In Amharic, Ethiopia’s lingua franca, and Tigrinya, Barhany’s mom tongue, “Gursha” refers to feeding one other diner from one’s personal hand, an act of generosity and respect on the Ethiopian desk.

Barhany was beneficiant certainly in humoring my request to prepare dinner together with her throughout our interview. As we sat down at one of many restaurant’s tables, Ethiopian jazz by Brooklyn-based Anbessa Orchestra performed by way of the audio system. Barhany laughed as she requested, “So, how ought to we do that factor?”

The next interview has been edited for brevity and readability.

How did you be taught to prepare dinner?

I used to be introduced up in an setting of feeding each other — serving, cooking.

Hospitality is one thing given inside our tradition. All the pieces is communal. As a child, you see your mother, your aunties, grandmas making ready meals with out even figuring out that somebody would are available in. However any person would are available in nonetheless.

Are you able to inform me the way you fell in love with Harlem?

I lived for about six to eight months downtown, on twentieth Road. In a really completely different setting. After I first got here, folks mentioned, “Harlem is harmful, don’t go there!”

And I mentioned to myself [laughs], “As a Black girl, what can occur to me from being round black folks, you understand?”

Rising up in Israel, you see a variety of films about Harlem. I used to be fixated. It’s the hub for Black tradition. Numerous nice leaders, musicians even — you understand, the Harlem Renaissance itself.

However listening to all about that, I wished to see, and never let folks deter me from being a part of this fascinating tradition. And I beloved it, and I moved in.

How do you utilize the restaurant as an area for instructing?

We carry a unique tradition whereas honoring the historical past of the place itself. Throughout and after the Harlem Renaissance, this was once Jimmy’s Rooster Shack. It was a speakeasy the place Black and white folks would congregate at 1:00 am. For soul meals and to take heed to good music like Billie Vacation or Hazel Scott.

That is the place younger Malcolm X labored as a waiter. That is the place he met Redd Foxx, the comic, from Sanford and Son, who labored as a dishwasher. That is the place Charlie Parker could be listening to the jazz pianist Artwork Tatum.

We couldn’t ignore that historical past. We created this artwork wall. And we now have a Redd Foxx drink and an X drink to honor these folks. We host stay music. A few books about Malcolm X had been accomplished on this venue.

Do you find yourself speaking about Ethiopian Jewish tradition with prospects?

Individuals ask a variety of questions. Some aged Jewish prospects need to know, “Are you actually Jewish?”

I’m like, “What? Are you severe? So that you assume you’re the one Jew on the planet?”

What are you able to do? I’m like, “Yeah, I assume I’m Jewish!” [laughs]

, Ethiopian Jews, we thought that we had been the one Jews on the planet! We by no means thought there have been white Jews, you understand?

However when you’re uncovered to different folks, once you journey, you see the variety, the mosaic of Jewish peoplehood. We now have to be extra open and engaged with issues we don’t know and never take it as a right that we’re the one group that exists.

In Ethiopia, what was the connection like between the Jewish group and your non-Jewish neighbors?

It was a great way of life. We had our Muslim neighbors and Christian neighbors. We had our Jewish group, synagogues, and all of that. We practiced our Judaism freely; there was no persecution. If there was a particular celebration, my group would invite Muslims, Jews, and Christians, they usually every would supply particular meals in accordance with our dietary legal guidelines. And vice versa.

Ethiopia is the land the place all of the three religions sort of flourished and developed. In the event you learn the cookbook, I write about how the Midrash Rabbah says that Moses was a king in Ethiopia for over 40 years. Christianity got here solely within the fourth century. There was possibly some paganism or different faiths, however the Hebrew faith was the bottom of Ethiopia. These days, folks within the Orthodox Ethiopian Church don’t eat pork. Shabbat is their holy day. And circumcision occurs on the eighth day.

Are there any issues that you just assume differentiate the culinary traditions of up to date Ethiopian Jews from different Ethiopians?

Oh, positive. For instance, Kashrut, the dietary legislation.

Ethiopians as an entire use butter to prepare dinner their beef, rooster, and all of that stuff. However Ethiopian Jews wouldn’t prepare dinner meat, like beef, with butter.

Are you able to inform me extra about how Ethiopian Jews have tailored their meals as they’ve migrated?

Through the first, I’d say, 20 years of immigration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, they needed to be very resourceful. There was no teff. No person knew what it was, and no person imported it into Israel. Ethiopians needed to make the most of no matter was at their disposal.

So, they used corn, wheat, sorghum, and millet to make injera. The wheat injera really led to well being points, as a result of it’s bleached flour. You’re not accustomed to consuming this sort of stuff. And Ethiopians impulsively developed these ailments, like diabetes and hypertension, from processed meals. Till lastly folks began importing teff and received again to the vitamins and diets that they had been accustomed to.

I might hold asking you questions, however you mentioned you mentioned you had some beets that we might prepare dinner? 

Yeah! [laughs]

Barhany leads me to the kitchen, the place she fingers me a hibiscus drink with ginger, orange, apples, and cinnamon, impressed by journeys to Dominica, her husband’s birthplace. It’s tart, candy, and deeply spiced. She locations just a few onions on a slicing board, and I slice them into skinny rings. 

Would you prefer to see Ethiopian dishes turn out to be mainstream Jewish meals?

They need to be. That’s my intention. I encourage folks to carry some collard greens or lentils, yellow cut up peas, or dabo to their Shabbat dinner. I hope with Gursha, finally each family will need to be celebrating the huge Jewish diaspora.

I don’t assume I’ve had dabo.

You didn’t? Humorous sufficient, I had a ebook signing yesterday. I all the time make extras. So, you might be in for a deal with.

Wow, thanks. Dabo isn’t usually on restaurant menus, proper?

No, it’s not. It’s a celebratory bread. It’s like having challah in a Jewish restaurant. We hold it for particular events.

We warmth the onions with oil in a big, chrome steel pot. I dump in two massive plastic containers of slivered beets.

Whereas the greens are cooking, Barhany cuts two palm-sized cubes of spongey dabo out of a sheet pan. I take a chew.

Barhany compares the bread’s texture to focaccia, and I agree. However Barhany’s dabo is nice and laced with nigella seeds, cardamom, and fenugreek. 

After a brief wait, Barhany pulls the lid off of the pot and provides salt, pepper, cumin, and a paste of ginger and garlic. She asks me if I need espresso.

No, thanks. In the event you do the Ethiopian espresso ceremony at night time, do folks find yourself staying up late?

I’ll inform you, I can drink a shot of espresso at 8:00, 9:00 at night time and I’m going to simply sleep. The espresso ceremony, inside Ethiopia, is completed 3 times a day. Individuals like to drink espresso. You may have it sufficient, it doesn’t hold you up.

Inside my Ethiopian custom, on the finish of Shabbat, for Havdalah, we roast espresso straight away. Numerous Jews burn frankincense and herbs; we do the espresso ceremony. Ethiopia is the birthplace of espresso, and of mankind.

Beejhay removes the lid from the pot of beets, and we style them once more: tender and candy. We head again to the eating room to eat them, together with some chopped jalapeño, injera, and a dollop of spiced crimson lentils.

Within the ebook, you discuss connections between Yemen and Ethiopia. Might you inform me extra about that? 

There are a variety of similarities within the meals. For instance, they do the flatbread lachuch, which is within the ebook, and is much like injera. They usually make malawach, which can be comparable.

Between Yemen and Ethiopia is only a Crimson Sea crossing. Sooner or later all through historical past it was underneath one kingdom. So there may be this alternate of influences and culinary traditions.

Not solely that, but in addition, the Yemenite group was the primary to welcome the Ethiopian immigrants to Israel, they usually helped when it comes to components and cooking. They had been each thought of darkish, or black, so there was a connection there, too.

In Gursha, it looks as if you had been being very beneficiant together with your recipes. The ebook looks as if an encyclopedia.

What, ought to I maintain on to them? It’s humorous you carry that up. Lots of people ask me, “Why would you give all of your recipes to folks?” I say, “I’ve no downside sharing.”

On the finish of the day, we’re not going to be right here perpetually. And I need to share. I’ve no concern of individuals stealing my recipes. Take pleasure in, and all of us, I believe, can profit from these.

And what’s necessary for me actually is to carry to mild the distinctive flavors, bread, and spices of Ethiopia. That’s my mission. I’ve nothing to carry on to. I simply need to share it: love, laughter, meals, happiness.