Meet The Makers: Addis Taste
Noera Ahmed of Greenwich Market’s Addis Taste is a true perfectionist. A Market veteran since 2009, she’s won a devoted following for her satisfying, spicy Ethiopian food. She gets to her stall at 6am most days to begin cooking, serves her regulars and new customers with the same warm enthusiasm throughout the day, then packs it all up at night, only to do it all again the next day.
Noera grew up in the Ethiopian city of Nazreth (now called Adama) about 100km southeast of the national capital, Addis Ababa. The child of Eritrean parents, she was raised Muslim in a majority-Christian country. Despite historic differences between Eritrea and Ethiopia, she remembers the two communities living in harmony in her homeland, only ever separated by ‘politics’. And food was always something all could agree on. ‘It’s the same! Ethiopia, Eritrea – we eat the same things.’
Those ‘things’ often involve the country’s famous spice blend, berbere. This piquant mix contains roasted chillies, coriander, cumin, fenugreek and cardamom seeds, black pepper, nutmeg, ginger and various other spices. A distinctly fruity top note is supplied by allspice (dried pimento). According to Noera, berbere is an essential ingredient in the most famous of all Ethiopian dishes: doro wot. Claimed by both Ethiopia and Eritrea as the national dish, doro wot involves cooking the berbere long and slow in a spiced, clarified butter called niter kibbeh. Once a dark, thick kulet (sauce) is achieved, chicken is added, stewed until tender and served with boiled eggs.
Addis Taste’s chicken stew, while not quite the full production that is doro wot (reserved as that special dish is for certain occasions) is nonetheless a thing of dark, mahogany joy. It’s a tongue-tingling, deeply satisfying dish just begging to be mopped up with fresh injera, the sour, spongy bread that is a signature of Ethiopian food. Most Ethiopian chefs buy in their injera from an external baker; but not the perfectionist, Noera! Determined to ensure that only the best teff (grain) and other ingredients are used, she takes on the laborious job of making all her injera herself, each and every day.
But, lest vegetarians and vegans be turned off, it should be noted that most of what Noera cooks is actually plant based. Ethiopian cuisine gives pride of place to non-meat dishes, and the country’s Orthodox Christians avoid meat every Wednesday and Friday. Scan the bain maries at Addis Taste and what catches they eye are alluring, dark-green stewed spinach, bright, turmeric-stained lentils, and brick-red chickpeas. Actually, Addis’s vegetarian dishes outnumber the meat ones, five to three.
Noera moved to the UK in 2005, joined a friend’s Ethiopian catering business in 2009, and eventually launched Addis Taste in 2014. Her deft hand with the pans soon won plenty of admirers, and she branched out from Greenwich Market into Victoria, Canary Wharf, Covent Garden and beyond. Now, as an arthritic knee has slowed her down and she looks to keep life a bit simpler, she’s back to one stall. And that one stall just had to be at Greenwich Market, where it all started. The market community is like ‘a big, friendly family,’ Noera beams, and she’s content serving up the food of her homeland to her many regulars.
But, come the pandemic, it was time for local residents and Greenwich University academics to return the love they’d felt through Noera’s food. They made a point of seeking her stall out frequently: ‘Some people would come four, five days a week. Some would come every day!’. Addis Taste was kept afloat during the dark days when the tourist trade she relies on vanished. Thank goodness they did, and Noera’s sensational tastes of Addis are still around for all to enjoy!
Interview by Hugh McNaughtan | Photos by Ed Simmons