Captions: In this paper, my analysis is not complete. I only talk about the environment(mostly the decorations in the restaurant) and the business of the restaurant, and the business part is not enough. In final version, I add more other sources, like comparing Chinese, Korean and American food cultures to Ethiopian cultures. For the food part in the final version, I also talk about Ethiopian people’s thought about food and the relation between Ethiopian food and African food, but not simply focus on how they cook their food. So there is more analysis in my final version than in this draft.
WR100 N1
Prof. Kim
10/21/2014
Ethiopian Restaurant in the United States
The United States contains a large amount of immigrants from all over the world and thus has various types of food served in various restaurants. The chosen restaurant of our team is Addis Red Sea, an Ethiopian restaurant which is located in 544 Tremont Street. In this ethnography I will be talking about customers, manager, and my opinions about the food, environment and business of Addis Red Sea.
I have visited the restaurant for two times. The first visiting was on Saturday noon with all the members in my group. There were only two to three groups of clients in the restaurant during our visiting. The groups basically consisted of a man and a little girl, two women who seem are friends and a man and a woman who are probably a couple. My second visiting was on Saturday night. During that time, there were many more people in the restaurant and the first floor was almost full (the restaurant has a basement but it is a bar so people usually have their dinner on the first floor). The groups were very diverse. There were two groups of family and each was more than five people; five groups of friends; three groups of couples and one group of only one person who came alone. No matter how many people were there in the restaurant, there were no Ethiopian customers. This is very weird because usually Chinese restaurants has many Chinese customers, Korean restaurants has many Korean customers and so forth. The manager then explained the reason: Ethiopian people always eat at home and they only dine out for special events. However, they still order take-out. According to the manager, there were many take-out ordered during that day. I then thought about the business of restaurant in Ethiopian. If Ethiopian people seldom eat out, there would be few restaurants in Ethiopian or the restaurants would only offer take-out. This is totally different from Chinese culture and American culture because Chinese people and American people often eat at restaurant.
The restaurant was full of portraits which were placed on the wall. According to the manager, who is also the owner’s wife, the owner of Addis was a photographer so he loved to put portraits on the wall. The manager said the portraits were excessive now because they originally had one more restaurant in another place but it was closed, so they moved all the portraits from there to this restaurant and placed them on the wall. Besides, there were many decorations in the restaurant including various types of sculptures, vases, hides, instruments, spears and mascots. A big showcase was placed near the entry. In the showcase, there were some photos, trophies, certificates, national flags and books about Ethiopia and its history. The owner has put a lot of effort in embellishing the restaurant. The light in the restaurant was a little bit dim. During our first visiting there was no extra light in the restaurant. However, candles were placed on every table when I visited there again The manager said Valentine’s day is the busiest day during a year. I think this is due to the romantic and quiet atmosphere in the restaurant.
We ordered a …called…. It consisted of tomato, green cabbage, chicken, beef and lamb with a lot of bread. We used hands to pick a piece of bread, wrapped a meat in it and then ate it. …is the most popular and common food in the restaurant. Almost 80% of customers order it.
Works Cited