Eshkol is, first and foremost, a family affair. The intimate space on Lancaster Avenue in Ardmore is slated for a soft opening on March 8. Husband-and-wife owners Tesh Gebremedhin and Chaltu Merga will welcome family, members of their church and the passersby who’ve been peering through the blinded windows for weeks on end.
For years, Merga dreamed of opening a restaurant. Food is in her blood. As a child growing up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, she watched her mother come home from a taxing office job to labor over doro wat and shiro. In Ethiopia, it’s traditional for young girls to help prepare food, and Merga was always involved. She was raised grinding and sun-drying peppers; she spent hours every week mixing ingredients and spices and pounding them together.
After moving to the United States at age 26 in 1990, Merga worked for decades in odd jobs, helping to support herself and her three young children. She has labored away as a live-in nanny, a daycare worker, a house cleaner, an interior designer and more, but she never had a chance to chase her passion.
Though she had cooked at weddings, religious events and communal services, Merga never made food professionally. Nevertheless, it was through these avenues that her cooking became so highly regarded among her community.
When Merga turned to Gebremedhin nine years ago and expressed her long-held desire to open a restaurant, she was worried he might discourage her. Gebremedhin supported her fully, but the two knew that opening a restaurant in America wouldn’t be like opening one in Ethiopia. The licenses and legal barriers make the process far more challenging. Furthermore, the habits around food are different here than they are back home for Merga. Even so, she knew she wanted to bring a slice of her culture to the Main Line.
Eshkol’s interior reflects that deliberate design choice. The restaurant has fewer than a dozen tables, with an additional mesob, or a woven basket used to store flatbreads, for communal-style meals. Warm lighting sheds a soft glow on the platters, and the cozy quarters exude a family dining room vibe. So intimate is the space that diners can smell the savory scents of flavorful cuisine wafting in from the kitchen as their meal is prepared.
For those unexperienced with Ethiopian cuisine, there are no utensils, and all dishes are eaten by hand, so prepare to get a little messy. The main culinary staple is a spongey bread called injera. It comes from a grain slightly more sour than those found in most other Western cuisines, but it’s perfect for sopping up sauces at the end of a meal.
To go on top of the injera, guests can order a wide variety of Ethiopian specialties. Veggies like gomen (collard greens cooked in oil with onion and ginger) and tikil gomen (cabbage sauteed with onion, garlic and ginger cooked in olive oil) lend a lighter essence to the meal. The meats, however, are the heavy hitters.
Merga’s special minchet abish is a spicy minced beef dish sauteed in spiced butter and simmered with onion, garlic and berbere (a spice mixture made with a chili pepper base).
The doro alicha is a chicken stew with eggs and drumsticks. The prospect of eating this rather messy entree can be intimating, but the meat is so tender it falls right off the bone without any effort.
Both the beg alica (a flavorful lamb dish sauteed with turmeric, onion, garlic and ginger in spiced butter) and the siga wot (beef cooked in spiced butter, simmered with onion, garlic, berbere and cumin) are especially flavorful when sprinkled with ayib.
For those who struggle with spicy dishes, ayib is a counterbalance. This traditional Ethiopian cottage cheese provides a natural cooling effect, though you’ll be hard-pressed to avoid the heat entirely if you want to fully indulge in Merga’s best dishes.
Each item on Eshkol’s menu is a labor of love. The recipes have been refined from generations of Merga family tradition. They have traveled over 7,000 miles and hundreds of years to appear in Ardmore. Cooked over open flames and charcoal fires, made from spices ground by hand with mortar and pestle, the dishes feature techniques adapted for the modern era that still ring true to Ethopian tradition.
Eshkol’s fare is unabashedly Ethiopian, and it wears that badge with pride, just as Merga will when her restaurant finally opens to hungry guests this weekend.
Eshkol
36 E Lancaster Ave., Ardmore, (484) 412-8044
Website
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