Grillaxin' with Assimba's Messeret Habeti, Part One

photo by Adriana Grant

SW: What do you want people to know about you?
Habeti: I am not here just to make money, also to make people healthy. We are trying to go as much as possible organic. And all those people that have a wheat allergy, a gluten allergy, I also provide. It is hard work for me, but I have wheat free and gluten free bread, our injera. It is wheat flour, organic teff flour, one hundred percent teff, which has no gluten, and also organic buckwheat flour.

But isn't teff what injera is usually made from?
Yes, but most of the people they use self-rising, also barley, millet, and corn. Those have glutens. This is the only restaurant that has gluten-free. There was no gluten-free before. This is three years I have done that. And also, we have one hundred percent vegetarian.

I am here to serve the community. My customers are my family. I want them to come back. If you eat here, you probably know that, this is not unhealthy, this is very healthy. I am the one who cooks from scratch. I make the bread for myself. I don't let anybody else help me. I don't trust anybody else. I have a cook helper, but I do all the preparation.

And how long have you been here?
I have been in this restaurant twenty years. Just me, myself. Twenty years in this area. I think this is the first Ethiopian restaurant in this area. I had a really hard time in this area. They don't want me to open here. Some people, they hand me notes personally so I could move out of here. But I said no, guess what, I am staying. They didn't want other people to have a business here. This area used to be bad, ten years ago. Whether you like it or not, this is a big place, the world is a big place. Big enough for everybody. I am here to stay. I give people samples. Most of the people, they would cover their nose so they wouldn't be able to smell our food. But I force them, I give them a little bit, samples so they could get used to our food, some greens or chicken, whatever they like. Now, all the neighborhood, they like it. And of course, now there are a whole lot of other Ethiopian restaurants. But it was very hard for us, when we first began, in 1997.

Can you tell me what your culinary inspirations are?
Just personal interest. Cooking is my hobby. I have been cooking since I was a child. I learned this from my mother. My mother teach us, starting seven years old, ten years old. I started learning what my Mom makes, from scratch. And of course if you are a girl back home, you are supposed to know how to cook good food, you are not allowed to pay for food. Now, these days everybody eats out, but before you are supposed to cook your cultural food and you are supposed to know how to cook from scratch. There are so many kinds of food. My Mom tried to teach us as much as she knew. I love to cook, I don't want to do anything else.

Check back tomorrow for more of our conversation with Messeret Habeti and how she wishes people would eat in Seattle.