Ethiopiques Cafe in Johns Creek cooks up culinary masterpieces

By ALEXANDER POPP alex@appenmedia.com

JOHNS CREEK, Ga. — The first thing you’ll notice when visiting Ethiopiques Café and Restaurant in Johns Creek is the amazing aroma of grilling meats and exotic spices.

The second thing you’ll notice is how much fun patrons are having sharing communal dishes of lovingly prepared traditional Ethiopian dishes. Opened in 2020 by three friends, Liza Abebe, Amy Asegidew and Biruk Demeselasie, Ethiopiques Café and Restaurant has quickly become a community staple for interesting ethnic and traditional foods that serve any taste preferences with a wide variety of vegan, vegetarian and grilled meat dishes.

Abebe said the Ethiopiques Café, located on State Bridge Road, was a longtime dream for the three friends, who for years had to travel up to an hour from their homes to find a good Ethiopian restaurant.

“We’ve been talking about opening a restaurant for like, almost 10 years,” Abebe said.

But when things finally came together for the partners and the restaurant was within their grasp, the COVID-19 pandemic reared its ugly head and made everything more complicated for their plans. The partners were forced to close down and reopen in different capacities several times during the first year of business.

But throughout that hard time, the partners said they got overwhelming support from the Johns Creek community, which kept them going and in business.

“If it wasn’t for the Johns Creek community, we wouldn’t be here,” she said.

For the uninitiated, Abebe said Ethiopian food is very similar to Indian and Mediterranean cuisine, only with a much different palette of spices and a serving style that encourages community, sharing and togetherness, with couples, friends and families all eating off of the same platter, using a spongy, sourdough flatbread called Injera to scoop and eat dishes.

Also common to Ethiopian cuisine is a spice mixture called Berbere, which mixes chili peppers garlic ginger. Nearly all their dishes have this spice mixture as a starting point.

“We use some spices that are very different, and yes, it’s spicy, but it’s more flavorful spicy than, ‘I’m dying spicy,’” she said.

Because Ethiopia is such a large and diverse country, there is a wide variety of dishes served around the country.

“Ethiopian cuisine is good for everyone,” she said. “You could be a vegan, vegetarian or meat lover because we fast 265 days out of the year.”

The most popular dishes at the Ethiopiques Café are the vegetarian platter, which offers a mixture of traditional Ethiopian dishes eaten with injera, and the doro wat, an Ethiopian chicken stew with a rich smoky flavor, tender chicken drumsticks and a hardboiled egg.

“It’s like our national dish,” she said of the Doro Wat.

Another major part of Ethiopian culinary culture is centered around coffee, which shouldn’t be a surprise because the East African country is where coffee, as we know it today, was first invented.

Each Sunday from noon-3 p.m., Ethiopiques Café serves a traditional coffee ceremony to its guests, roasting green coffee beans in the traditional style and three rounds of brewing that produce different strengths of coffee.

“It’s a whole ceremony,” she said.

You can visit Ethiopiques Café and Restaurant from Tuesday to Sunday, 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m., at 11130 State Bridge Road in Johns Creek. For a look at their menu and more information about their food, visit them on Facebook or at ethiopiquescafe.com.