The place to eat in Blacktown, Sydney

With all due respect to pumpernickel, paratha, focaccia and the bagel, Ethiopia’s injera could be the final word bread. It’s gentle and spongy and dotted with crumpet holes but additionally has sufficient heft to help brightly spiced stews. Historically made with water and teff (a sort of tiny grain), the fermented bread can be faintly tangy, usually described as a “sort of sourdough pancake”. However injera is way more than a pancake. In Ethiopia, injera is life.

Nonetheless, like asbestos-free parks and inexpensive property, injera choices in Sydney are restricted. In Auburn, there’s Salam and Ibrahim Eatz. Ashfield has Queen of Sheba (liked by vegans for its kik alicha split-lentil stew) and in Blacktown there’s Gursha, embellished with fairy lights.

Husband and spouse Yibeltal Tsegaw and Rahel Woldearegay moved from Ethiopia to Australia 20 years in the past and opened Gursha in 2017. Tsegaw runs the modest eating room; Woldearegay helms the one-woman kitchen. On weekends, East African households collect round platters of injera coated in several wots (stews) like splodges on an oil painter’s palette. There’s laughter. There’s music. The air is heavy with spice and incense.

Over the previous few years, I’ve seen meals writers within the US and UK declare that Ethiopian delicacies is about to “take off” there. The prediction principally exists to current a sizzling new take, but it surely’s not fully unfounded. Vegetarians are effectively catered for, the injera is gluten-free and the spice ranges swing between soothing and a faculty bully’s headlock. You by no means stroll away from an Ethiopian desk considering, “Nicely, that was a bit uninteresting. Let’s simply go to the pub subsequent time.”

You could stroll away smelling of berbere, although – Ethiopia’s signature spice mix containing chilli, fenugreek, powdered ginger, coriander and a couple of dozen different fragrant dried issues. Time-wasting components needn’t apply.

Berbere stars in Gursha’s misir wot ($18), a thick and fiery red-lentil stew, and Ethiopian flagship yedoro wot ($22), a medley of boundless flavour that includes hard-boiled eggs and long-simmered hen legs.

Ethiopian delicacies is constructed round kinship and sharing, so rally a bunch and begin with golden, lentil-filled sambossa triangles (4 for $12). Crunchy chickpea and inexperienced chilli falafels (six for $12) are a sensible thought, too, plus a Greek-ish home salad ($10), simply because it’s good to have some uncooked onion, tomato and cucumber to steadiness the oncoming wots. You may most likely skip the peanut butter-laced tomato salad ($10) until you’re actually into peanut butter.

“You by no means stroll away from an Ethiopian desk considering, ‘Nicely, that was a bit uninteresting. Let’s simply go to the pub subsequent time.’”

The misir wot is the vegetarian major I maintain coming again to, though there’s additionally loads to like concerning the gomen ($22), sauteed kale pulsing with onions, chilli and too many spices to call. Tsegaw tells me that the preferred order is the ataklet beyeayntu ($27, pictured beneath), a combo of 4 vegetarian dishes circling a sunset-orange dollop of garlic-forward chickpea and tomato stew “shiro”, with all the things seeping into extra injera. Positively value a crack if it’s your first go to.

Injera is designed to be eaten off and eaten with, the thought being to tear a swatch of the bread and use it to choose up non-bread meals. Do it proper, and also you shouldn’t get any stew in your arms.

Superior-grade injera customers could carry out an precise gursha: the observe of popping somewhat wot parcel right into a companion’s mouth as an indication of affection and respect. My spouse says she doesn’t belief me to not spill any deep-red stews on her shirt. Honest.

Meatier choices value rolling your sleeves up for embrace the tibs ($26), a aromatic, home-cooking staple of beef sauteed with rosemary and onion, and delicate, turmeric-yellow alicha wot ($20), which is loaded with lamb, potato, carrot and loads of ginger.

On the different finish of the warmth spectrum, there’s particular kitfo ($26): finely chopped uncooked beef marinated in cardamom-infused butter and throbbing with a mitmita spice mix. Gomen and ayip (Ethiopia’s reply to cottage cheese) are served on the facet. I may fortunately by no means eat one other steak tartare, however would eat this kitfo as soon as every week if Blacktown was nearer to residence.

It’s unlikely that you simply’ll end a meal right here feeling heavy and bloated, which most likely has somewhat to do with injera’s quick fermentation course of, and loads to do with what occurs while you eat Ethiopian stews together with your arms. It’s extra a case of thought-about mouthfuls right here and there quite than shovelling an entire bowl of fettuccine in your face. What will we name it – conscious consuming, maybe?

If Ethiopian meals is certainly about to “take off”, Gursha is the appropriate place to get in on the bottom stage.

This assessment was initially printed in Good Weekend journal