Tucson’s new Ethiopian restaurant, Café Desta, is appropriately named. The word desta, you see, means “happiness” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia, and Café Desta serves up happiness on large rounds of injera, the absorbant flat-bread particular to this type of cuisine.
An Ethiopian restaurant’s injera is the key to the success of the rest of the menu, since injera is pretty much an edible plate and utensil – food is both served upon it and scooped up and eaten with it. That’s why a restaurant’s injera recipe is “a closely-guarded secret,” says owner Brooke Molla, with a wink.
Brooke and her Ethiopian-born husband, Telahoun, opened the restaurant at the beginning of December, 2010, in the spacious, high-ceilinged building at “Five Points,” or the intersection of Stone Avenue, 18th Street and 6th Avenue. Situated at the confluence of four downtown neighborhoods -- Barrio Viejo, Armory Park, Barrio Santa Rosa and Santa Rita Park – the building has a long and colorful history.
“We’ve always loved the building,” Telahoun related. “It was built in the 1920s and has been many things including a barbershop, a Piggly Wiggly, Gibson Stationery and of course, the bike shop until they relocated to just north of here.”
Telahoun may be of Ethiopian descent, and visits family there fairly often, but he and Brooke are long-time Tucsonans who met here during high school and both attended the U of A. The Mollas also own Tempe’s popular Café Lalibela, another family-run Ethiopian restaurant. “The initial response to
Café Desta has been amazingly good,” said Telahoun. The Mollas also plan to open a grocery store in the cavernous space next to the restaurant (in the same building). “We want to create a suymbiotic relationship between the neighborhood, the café and the grocery store,” he went on to explain. “The aim is to provide fresh made things, to make wholesome items easily available. If we stick to what we know works, we can also provide a great alternative for this area.”
What the Mollas know works is their roster of savory, mild-to-spicy vegetarian and meat dishes. A recent visit by a family of four – two of whom are 10 year-olds – had the diners trying an array of items on the menu. The misr (red-split lentils cooked with onions, berbere and herbs) and kik (yellow split peas cooked with onion, turmeric and herbs) were highly flavorful and just-right spicy. Lamb and beef dishes were served alongside the vegetarian ones, family-style on one platter. The food, ambiance and no-utensils thing was a hit all around – the kids especially thought the style of eating with the injera instead of flatware was cool.
Café Desta recently got its “bring your own bottle” license, so patrons can bring whatever wine or beer they like. There is no corkage fee.
Dessert the night of our visit was tiramisu, but we were too full to indulge. An earlier trip to the restaurant had me trying one of their coffee drinks – the Cubano, a favorite of Telahoun’s – and a fabulous almond tart-cake treat that hit the spot.
The grocery store next to Café Desta will have a coffee roaster on site, and the Mollas are adamant about serving strictly Ethiopian, fair-trade coffees. “Once we open the grocery store, we’re going to have more seating in there and a coffee shop vibe with wi-fi. We’d also like to have live music eventually,” Telahoun added.
Brooke’s woodcuts and oil-on-wood paintings hang in the hallway gallery between the dining room and the kitchen. “We want to show other artists’ work too,” she said.
“Our mission is to create a really dynamic destination for this area,” added Telahoun. “We’re still a work in progress; so far we’ve just created a landing space.”
Make Café Desta one of your landing spaces. Their address is 758 S. Stone Ave; phone 370-7000. Hours: Mondays-Thursdays and Sundays: 11am-9pm. Fridays and Saturdays, 11am-10pm.
