Colucci owner Fetlework Tefferi founded her family-owned restaurant in 1991 and remains dedicated to old-school cooking techniques. She travels back to Ethiopia several times a year to source ingredients from local farmers and check up on her family’s spice processing plant in Modjo. The restaurant starts serving Ethiopian breakfasts at 8am each morning, including misto firfir, injera tossed in a buttery, turmeric-spiced berbere sauce and sauteed with onions, tomatoes, and garlic. For dinner, try the shouro combination platter, which comes with shouro, gomen and atakilt. Meat eaters will appreciate the gomen besaga, in which the greens are sauteed with cubes of beef, garlic, ginger, onions and clarified butter and served in a cast iron skillet. A particular house favorite is the assa tibs, a whole fish fried Ethiopian-style.
Centered around Telegraph Avenue in Oakland are some of the best Ethiopian restaurants in the Bay Area, offering fresh, deftly spiced foods, from vegan and vegetarian specialties like gomen and yekik alicha to hearty kitfo, tibs, and stews. For those of you who refuse to venture to the East Bay, there are good restaurants in San Francisco on this list too. Enjoy.
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