(Beth LaBerge/KQED)Īke no mistake about it, though: Zeni is Gebremariam’s success story through and through. “He became the backbone to her dream, and out of that, Zeni Restaurant was born.” Gebremariam says she learned to cook by watching her mother. “ absolutely loved and adored his wife and wanted to give her whatever it was she wanted,” Getachew, the immigration lawyer, says. He spent the remaining years of his life helping Gebremariam realize her vision of opening and running a successful restaurant. Eventually, Feki was so inspired by his wife’s passion for cooking that he quit his job and mortgaged the house. After long shifts, he would come home and shuttle orders of homemade Ethiopian food that Gebremariam had made-she’d started a small, informal business catering to other Ethiopians hungry for a taste of home. Once they both got out of Ethiopia they applied for resettlement in the U.S., which was granted to them in 1991.Īfter the young couple arrived in San Jose, Feki took one of those tech jobs building semiconductors for IBM. Eventually, he was able to join her, having secured a temporary stay as an agricultural specialist. Gebremariam went ahead to Nairobi first and found a house while Feki finished school. But it wasn’t until the Derg’s crushing rule was nearly over that they were able to make it to Kenya. Even then, however, Gebremariam was incredibly clever and resourceful.īack in Addis Ababa, the teenage lovers decided that the only way to ensure their safety was to flee the country altogether. These days, she’s an unflappable veteran of the restaurant industry, but at the time she was just a scared kid. “His family found a guard to bribe, so when he escaped, the camp never knew he was missing,” Gebremariam recalls. Painted long-necked bottles for serving tej, or traditional Ethiopian honey wine.
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When Feki wound up getting captured, Gebremariam-who was already married to him at the time-immediately started working with Feki's family on a scheme to free him. As a member of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) when he was just a teenager, Feki fought against the Derg, the oppressive military regime that governed Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991. Instead, there’s a love story at the heart of the restaurant.īefore Gebremariam and her late husband Abebaw “Muna” Feki opened their restaurant almost 20 years ago, they first had to risk their lives to be together. According to some estimates, the Ethiopian population has swelled to roughly 25,000 in Santa Clara County alone.īut what makes Zeni so uniquely special isn’t just a matter of demographics. Ethiopians came to Silicon Valley to take these jobs, and many ended up staying in the area. Companies like IBM and Cisco went on a hiring spree to keep up with the demand, coinciding with the surge of new immigrants. In the case of the San Jose area, specifically, the first dot-com bubble in the mid ’90s created a demand for an incredible amount of labor to build the electronic components for personal computers, which were quickly becoming a domestic necessity in American homes. “People won't miss it because they don’t want to miss out on the food.” “You know you’ve arrived when your Ethiopian wedding or event has Zeni as your caterer,” says Yemi Getachew, a San Jose-based immigration lawyer. Nestled in an unassuming row of small businesses in the westside of San Jose, Zeni has built an outsized reputation in the Bay Area: Many in the community confidently say it’s the most exceptional Ethiopian restaurant in Northern California. There’s an aromatic warmth that trails off from the kitchen’s bubbling clay pots and sizzling cast iron pans and into the surrounds of the neighborhood-the scent of cardamom pods, paprika, caramelizing onions and freshly cut hot peppers. Today, visitors know they’ve arrived at Gebremariam’s restaurant well before they enter its doors. But for Zeni Gebremariam, owner of Zeni Ethiopian Restaurant, it doesn’t come close to being the biggest challenge she’s faced: Long before she even thought about opening a restaurant, Gebremariam had to help the love of her life escape from a prison camp in Ethiopia just to have the chance to leave the country. 20–29.Įeping a restaurant afloat through a pandemic might not be easy. A new installment will post each weekday from Oct.
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KQED's San Jose: The Bay Area's Great Immigrant Food City is a series of stories exploring San Jose's wonderfully diverse immigrant food scene. Zeni Gebremariam opened her namesake restaurant in San Jose almost 20 years ago.