ArborFood
Restaurants Review
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Maybe because there are only two of them, it's hard to talk about one without reference to the other. Both serve similar food, but whereas the Blue Nile is big and boisterous, Red Sea is small and serene. The Blue Nile uses a lot of fairly aggressive seasonings; Red Sea's food is mild, maybe even underspiced. The most obvious difference, though, is the size of their respective menus. The Blue Nile offers just two options: a vegetarian "feast" and a meat feast, which is the vegetarian feast with some meat dishes added.
At Red Sea, you can order individual entrees or put together a custom combination platter of your favorites. Both restaurants serve their dishes in colorful little piles on a palette of injera, a spongy bread also provided on the side, to be torn and used in place of eating utensils. The Blue Nile's injera is made with white flour, Red Sea's with whole wheat. ..." >>more
Easter Michigan Universtiy Community
Ethnic food brings a taste of culture - by Anastasia Maslova
When I entered the Ethiopian restaurant Red Sea at 1785 Washtenaw Ave. in Ypsilanti, I found a little Africa there. A national white dress with red ornament on the wall, traditional textiles telling its own story and original hand-made African tables called "mosobe" describe a different way of life.
Music "from back home" made Yohannes smile. He started to go to this restaurant almost every week; the food there is very close to Eritrean, his national cuisine. The interior details are part of his culture, too. The pictures decorating the walls show how the food is cooked. The native woman is making injera, the national bread.
The injera is very important because it accompanies every dish. All the food is served on a big round plate and a piece of injera. Pieces of injera are used instead of spoons and forks. Sydorenko said it adds to the cozy atmosphere of the place.
"I felt cozy because you actually forget about formalities when you eat with hands," she said.
The owner of the restaurant, Essayas Habte, explained to me it takes two to three days to make the dough for injera. Three people are in charge of Red Sea, and they work hard to make the authentic food, Habte said.They try to stick to cooking traditions, even if it doesn't fit in with the American "fast" pace of life.
The crazy pace slows down reflecting the Ethiopian culture, in which people value the taste, not the time. Even coffee takes a couple of hours, Yohannes said. A cup of coffee in Eritrean culture is not a mix of a sweetener, cream and Regular or Decaf liquid from a coffee machine. It is a ceremony when friends and family gather to talk. Women roast coffee beans and take them around for everybody to smell the aroma. This is also a sort of superstition: the smell of freshly roasted coffee beans takes the evil spirits away, Habte said. Then they grain the beans without any electronic device and brew coffee in hand-made clay pots called "gebena." Coffee is very strong; it is served in small cups, and they have it in rounds or "stages." There are four rounds; each has a specific name. After every round the water is added to the pot.
Coffee ceremonies take place at Red Sea on Sundays. This is another piece of the mosaic that brings a foreign culture to the U.S. Ethnic food can be an interesting and tasty way to get to know this foreign culture.
But for some students, Ethiopian or Indian restaurants are like a cup of tea with strawberry jam to me, a way to feel at home in an American cultural shake. We are in this shake together, that's why we should know its other ingredients. >>more
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