Cambridge, Massachusetts, has a long history of welcoming immigrants, with diverse communities enriching the city's cultural landscape. As immigrants arrived, they brought their cuisines, often opening restaurants that served the food they had enjoyed in their home communities. Dining in immigrant restaurants was a way for residents to learn about the conditions that led the owners and workers to leave their home countries and to put very real human faces to the conflicts they had read about in the newspaper or seen on television. One notable example of this cultural exchange is the story of Asmara Restaurant, an Eritrean establishment that has become a beloved fixture in the Cambridge community.
Before becoming an executive chef and restaurant owner in the United States, chef Letensae Afeworki grew up in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. By the time she was 12 years old, she had mastered the art of communal cooking. Eritrea is a beautiful country located on the Horn of Africa (northeast). After 30 years of war with Ethiopia, Eritrea became an independent country on May 24, 1992.
In 1981, when Afeworki emigrated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, news of her arrival quickly spread among the small, eager, and hungry Habesha community living in the Boston metropolitan area. She spent years feeding folks from her home and earned a reputation as a top East African cook before opening the doors of Asmara Restaurant in 1986.
Thirty-three years later, Asmara Restaurant has become the chef’s Cambridge community dining room, with customers from all backgrounds treated as if they are her kin. “This is my home. This is my kitchen,” she told me. “And it makes me happy when my customers feel as if they’re my best friend.” Some regulars have been frequenting Asmara Restaurant since she opened the place, she said.
In the Cambridge of the 1950s, sharing food - whether at a restaurant or a school bake sale - was also a way of learning about another culture. In the decades that followed, as home cooking began to give way, at least in part, to restaurant dining, sharing a meal was a means of understanding the histories and cultures of the increasingly diverse Cambridge population.
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Through sharing foodways, Cantabrigians were able to connect with immigrants from Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Haiti and other regions of the world.
History Cambridge hosts a fundraiser Oct. 23 called Culinary Crossroads that explores the city’s rich food traditions and the role of food as a means of community connections. Held at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, this event features a discussion of the school’s history and its place in the Porter Square neighborhood and the city as a whole. Owner and director Sean Leonard shares reflections on his 25 years of experience at CSCA, and assistant director of education chef Simone Montali provides a cooking demonstration. Attendees will also have the opportunity to tour the school’s new cafe space directly across Massachusetts Avenue, where students gain experience preparing and selling coffee, tea, pastries and other treats made in their professional training program.
Asmara Restaurant was established in 1986. For many years, Asmara has hosted several Bostonians, New Englanders, and Foreigner with Eritrean Food. Many people enjoy the Eritrean custom of eating with there fingers with our bread called Injera. Asmara Restaurant provides two kinds of Injera’s. One is made out of Rice (50%) & Wheat (50%) flour and the other is made out of Teff (95%) & Wheat (5%).
Teff is a high grain packed with a considerable amount of protein, calcium, and fiber in each colorful seed. If you are allergic to wheat please call the manager to speak about what your options are. Asmara offers traditional tables called Mesob. They are woven baskets, which diner’s sit around the Mesob and the plate of food is placed in the center of the basket. Asmara Restaurant offers a variety of food to cater to the spicy, mild, vegetarian, carnivore, or vegan diners.
The restaurant is filled with Eritrean artifacts, a variety of traditional items and several paintings done by an Eritrean Artist of his personal visions of Eritrea. Once you walk into Asmara Restaurant, we want you to experience something very different and satisfying with our flavorful food and our colorful culture.
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In 1993, when I was 7 years old, my father, a Congolese immigrant, brought me to eat at Asmara Restaurant for the first time. He chose to sit at one of the traditional dining areas available: a small end table for drinks accompanied by chairs surrounding a mosob (Eritrean dining basket). When our food came out, it was served on a large family-style platter that was placed in the mosob, with heaps of begeeh mloukhiya (lamb curried with red pepper sauce), fluy tibsy (tenderloin tips), shuro (stewed chickpeas), bersen (lentils curried in pepper sauce), hamli (collard greens), and their juices soaking the injera (teff-flour based sour bread) underneath it all.
Eritrean Dishes Served on Injera
Twenty-seven years later, the menu at Asmara Restaurant is as I remembered it, exclusively featuring an Eritrean spread of poultry, lamb, beef, seafood, vegetables, and house salads using 27 spices and ingredients, including berbere, a spice mixture that is a common ingredient in many Ethiopian and Eritrean dishes.
The art on the walls portray scenes straight from Asmara: a blown-up photograph of Kombishtato, also known as Independence Avenue, and vibrant Eritrean paintings on animal-hide canvases portraying women weaving mosobs, making injera, and of course, eating communally. “We have great people that come here that are excited, happy, willing, and open,” says Saba Afeworki, manager of operations at Asmara Restaurant. “Everybody’s family. Even if you’re not blood-related. This is a safe space."
Spices, aroma and a lengthy cooking process are what make Lettensa Afeworki's food so special, she said.Afeworki, 56, of Somerville, grew up watching her mother cook in Eritrea, a country in the Horn of Africa. A few years after immigrating to the United States in 1981, she decided to open Asmara Restaurant in Central Square to offer Americans a bit of her culture.Twenty-eight years later, Cantabrigians still visit Asmara for an authentic Eritrean dining experience, Afeworki said.
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To this day, the menu includes two paragraphs about the restaurant’s history and Eritrea’s cultural relationship to Italy, something many customers didn’t know about when the 1986 menu debuted with both Eritrean and Italian dishes. Back then, when customers scoffed at the “authenticity” of the dishes like lasagna and spaghetti, Afeworki responded as she would to any friend: She gave free samples and shared Eritrea’s unknown history with customers.
The hyphenated American, or immigrant, experience is one of multiple consciousnesses: knowing where you came from, where you’ve landed, and where you hope to go. Home is wherever you are, and your tribe are those who honor what you bring to the table, no matter what language you speak.
Normally a locus of commercial activity, Central Square has recently been plagued by a decline in customers, due in part to an increase in crime and homelessness.Thirteen restaurant owners formed the organization six months ago to advertise one of Central Square's main attractions--its international restaurants, according to Central Square Business Association President Carl F. Barron.
"We had a feeling that one of the best assets of Central Square was the diversification of ethnic restaurants," Barron said.
The organization hopes to draw more clients to Central Square, according to Toscanini's Ice Cream owner Gus E. Rancatore."The main point of the campaign was to emphasize the square's existing strengths--the restaurants and the night life," he said. "We want customers, especially college students, to either come back or to come back more frequently."
The campaign is also designed to improve Central Square's image, said Abebe A. Woldu, who owns Asmara, an Ethiopian restaurant."We got together to make sure that the security and cleanliness of the Central Square community was advertised," he said.
Barron said cooperation, not competition, characterizes the restaurant owners' activities."The restaurants, although they are all operating within a very small geographical area, are working harmoniously for the common good," he said.
The coalition of restaurant owners plans other events, including a food donation to needy people and a drawing for $1000 in gift certificates, to promote the Central Square area, according to Frank Mastromauro. Mastomauro owns the Italian restaurant La Groceria.The restaurant owner's actions are part of a long-term plan to improve the square, Mastromauro said.
“What’s for lunch?” is one of the more universal questions of the human experience, though the presence of two large universities in Cambridge affects the range of choices available to a hungry grad student. Many of the food options near MIT and Harvard Square cater to the fast-casual appetites of millennials or the droves of wealthy tourists who have come to visit the campuses. But it hasn’t always been this way. Cambridge has a long history of attracting immigrant groups from around the world.
MIT students come from all over the world, bringing with them many cultural traditions. But many are transient immigrants, here to get a degree before moving out. While we are here, I think it is worthwhile to appreciate the previous immigrants who have settled in the area by supporting their businesses.
Eritrean people are very friendly, loving, and caring individuals and if you ever have a chance to travel to Africa you should defiantly consider Eritrea as a destination because it is one of the most enchanting countries you will ever see with its Historical and Modern Architecture, Ancient Ruins, Religious Sites and its beautiful landscape; not to mention the amazing Red Sea, where you can swim, tan, and eat great seafood.
In conclusion, Cambridge's culinary scene is a testament to the city's diverse immigrant communities. Restaurants like Asmara not only offer a taste of home for immigrants but also provide a cultural bridge for locals, enriching the community through shared food experiences.
Asmara, Eritrea
Q&A with Lettensa Afeworki
Q: Why did you name Asmara after the capital of an African country?
A: I was born in Asmara city. I'm from Eritrea, so I named it after my country's capital.
Q: You offer traditional Eritrean food, but can customers also expect a typical Eritrean dining experience and atmosphere?
A: Of course, because this is a different culture. We serve our traditional food different from other African [countries] with our traditional bread and our traditional spices. So, people enjoy it. They call our traditional food friendship food. We serve it in one big plate. So, people come with four, five, six people, they share with each other, together. That makes it more fun to eat here. It's family style. You don't need plates; you eat with your hands. The bread is fermented overnight. We have gluten-free and we have another one.
Q: How would you describe Eritrean food, its flavor and appearance?
A: Our food is very colorful because we have berbere. There are 27 ingredients inside here so this is the chili berbere, and we ground it like this. It smells good, tastes good.
Q: What does it taste like? Is it spicy, or is it sweet?
A: We don't have sweet here. It is a little bit spicy, but it doesn't burn you. You feel the spice and at the same time you feel the flavor. So, even though you feel a little bit hot, you never stop eating … We cook slowly for three hours, so the hot stuff is gone. Everything is covered by the spices and fresh tomatoes, fresh garlic, everything. The flavor is there, but when you eat you feel a little spicy. Our cooking is slow. It's not like fast food. Everything is detail like when you paint a painting. When you enjoy cooking, you talk to your dish. I play with my food. I love cooking.
Q: How did you learn how to cook?
A: My mother. She is a good cook. In my country when you have a child, because they are expecting you to get married, you have to know about your household. You have to know how to get food on the table for your husband, for your children, so mothers always teach their children.
Q: What's your favorite dish?
A: They are all my favorite … My customers love the combination. They have the opportunity to try different (things) like chicken, lamb mixed with vegetarian salad, shrimp. So instead of one kind, it's a combo.
Q: What makes Eritrean food different from other African foods?
A: Ethiopians and Eritreans have the same culture, but if you go to Sudan, it's different. If you go to Saudi Arabia, it's different. If you go to Egypt, it's different. Eritreans and Ethiopians have the same tradition because we don't eat too much rice. We eat the bread. Everything is served with the bread. It's soft like a pancake. You cut the bread, you dip it, and you eat it with the sauce. That makes it different because nobody in East Africa cooks like us. If you go to Kenya, they have bland food, no flavor, but they love it like that. If you got Somalia, they love so much sugar because they love sweets. They love adding bananas to everything. But if you to Eritrea and Ethiopia, we have very unique flavored food, spices.
Q: Cambridge is very culturally diverse. What sets Asmara apart from other ethnic restaurants in the city?
A: We have unique spices. When we serve the food, the spices are like perfume. Oh my God, it smells really good.
