Food & Beer
LET'S EAT!
By Dan Greenwood
SOUTHERN MN STYLE Rahma Abdi of Karshe Tea. Abdi spent tie in Somaliland where she learned about her roots and culture.
Karshe Tea Taste of home Photos by Pat Christman
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fter Rahma Abdi graduated from St. Peter High School in 2016, her father organized a family trip to Somaliland so she could learn about her roots and culture. Born in Yemen, Abdi was for the first time setting foot in the country her father grew up in. Making up the northern third of Somalia, Somaliland has been a success story. It’s a peaceful, representative democracy with its own flag, police force and parliament. Its stability has led the autonomous state to attract a growing interest among tourists looking for a unique destination to visit. 64 • JULY 2021 • MANKATO MAGAZINE
The trip was a life-changing experience for Abdi, and it inspired her father, Sami Ismail, to follow his lifelong dream of opening a Somali café in downtown Mankato, which officially opened last year. While eating at a restaurant in Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, Abdi sampled the best milkshake she’d ever tasted, made from mangos. Intrigued, she asked the restaurant owners what their secret was. “They wrote down the recipe in Somali on a piece of paper for me,” Abdi said. “I held onto it until I got back to Minnesota. I asked my mom to read it for me and we made
it. We decided to have it here and it’s our No. 1 hit.” “It definitely reminds me of home,” she said. “Even when my cousins come here and visit the café, they always think of back home.” Made of vanilla ice cream and mangos, she describes the milkshake as very sweet and condensed. It also contains Vimto, a carbonated beverage made from a variety of herbs and spices and a combination of raspberry, black currant and grape juices. “Mango is the main one, but we also offer blueberry, strawberry, mixed berry, watermelon and I plan
