Said Mohamed, one of four children with whom Fita moved to Grand Forks from Ethiopia in the early 2000s, plans to call his planned breakfast and lunch joint “Tenu,” a nickname, when it opens this spring in downtown Grand Forks. She knows about the restaurant, Mohamed said, but not the name.
“This will be the reveal,” he told the Herald Thursday.
Fita, who now lives in the Twin Cities, worked tirelessly to provide for her family after they moved here when Mohamed was 10.
“She worked at Simplot for however many years and never really spent the money on herself,” Mohamed, now 26, said. “She’s the whole reason that our family has had any success whatsoever. ... And she's also one of the best cooks that I've ever known. I know a lot of people say that about their moms, but she genuinely is a very talented Ethiopian cook. She doesn't do any American cuisine, but her Ethiopian cuisine is just outstanding.”
Two of Fita’s specialties: “doro wat,” which is a chicken dish slow cooked for hours in a spicy sauce, and “kitfo,” which is lean, raw ground beef soaked in a spice butter. Both are served on “injera,” a spongy flatbread, and Fita serves her kitfo with homemade cheese.
Ethiopian cuisine itself probably won’t be on the menu at the restaurant Mohamed plans to open with Drew Krank, his business partner and a fellow chef, but some of the country’s characteristic flavors might seep in, including cumin, berbere, pickled and fermented fruits and vegetables, basil, green cardamom, and more.
Mohamed and Krank plan to serve breakfast and lunch fare – eggs, pastries, sandwiches, and so on –five days each week, and use local, sustainably grown, and seasonally appropriate ingredients. They also plan to serve vegan and vegetarian dishes.
"We just want to make good quality food that's kind of changing as the seasons change, or we just feel like updating it, because we are young chefs and we do like to play around with food,” Mohamed said.
The pair met while working at Sanders 1907 restaurant in downtown Grand Forks. Mohamed stayed after it became Sky’s in 2015. Krank moved to the Amazing Grains co-op before it closed in 2017.
Both chefs have since moved to the Minneapolis area to work at hip, popular restaurants like Young Joni and Bachelor Farmer. They both plan to move back to Grand Forks before their restaurant opens in the former offices of the Olson, Juntunen, Sandberg and Boettner law firm, a block off DeMers Avenue.
That spot is appealing because it’s downtown and, in Mohamed’s estimation, it already looks somewhat like a diner. He and Krank plan to bake bread in the basement, and install a patio in the rear parking lot plus a kitchen in a now-empty corner office. The hope, Mohamed said, is to get as much work done as possible so the restaurant can hit the ground running if the COVID-19 pandemic recedes enough to safely open later this winter or in the spring.
The chance to design it more or less from scratch, the central location, and the aesthetic are worth the cost of those sorts of renovations, Mohamed said. Many restaurants open in the former home of an earlier one that moved or failed, which means the previous proprietor’s decision to, say, tuck the kitchen in the back of the house means the kitchen stays in the back of the house, even if that’s not convenient for the new occupants.
“It’s rare that you get to create the entire thing,” Mohamed said. “We're going to make the playlist for the music, we're going to pick the glassware, we're going to pick the place, we're going to pick the food, we're going to create the environment that we think is appealing ... a place where we would like to eat, a place where we would like to get a cup of coffee, and the food, straight up, what we would like to eat for breakfast is what you're going to see on that menu.”
The Link LonkDecember 05, 2020 at 02:00AM
https://www.grandforksherald.com/news/government-and-politics/6788013-New-downtown-Grand-Forks-restaurant-to-be-named-after-chefs-hard-working-immigrant-mother
New downtown Grand Forks restaurant to be named after chef's hard-working immigrant mother - Grand Forks Herald
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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