Thursday, June 21, 2018

Menbere Medhane owns Ahadu, an Ethiopian restaurant in Seattle #EthiopiansInSeattle


This is the third evolution of Medhane’s business, which began as a small market in 2005. After it morphed into a butcher shop in 2012, customers began to request that Medhane also cook the meat for them, then maybe some vegetables to go with it. She was game, but says it was essential that she start the restaurant with spices from her home country.

Her late father worked in the spice business while she was growing up in Ethiopia. When famine and civil war ravaged the country, he sent her to live in Seattle. The teenager, who spoke little English when she arrived in 1986, lived with an older brother, attended Garfield High School and worked at McDonald’s to pay for her prom dress. In 2014, she returned to Ethiopia, where a few siblings and her mother still live, acquired the spices and returned to open her restaurant.

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