The Sidamo café in Berlin-Lichterfelde is popular in the neighborhood. Soon, the whole of Germany will be supplied with Ethiopian bread from here.
Neighborhood love
Small café, big dream
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When Blen Baheru, a commercial tenant of HOWOGE, opens the door to her neighborhood café in the Thermometersiedlung housing estate in Lichterfelde , it immediately feels familiar. Café Sidamo is like a living room, the atmosphere warm and relaxed, the conversations friendly. And those who, like us, feel like they know Blen from somewhere might well be right. At just 16, the young Berliner was already on the big stage, enchanting not only Sarah Connor with her voice. "Even in the schoolyard, I was always expected to sing for everyone," Blen says, recalling her TV appearance on X Factor in 2012. And yet, she chose a different career path.
"It is my dream"
As the daughter of an Ethiopian father, Blen grew up in Prenzlauer Berg, where her father ran one of the first Ethiopian restaurants in Berlin from an early age. "I don't know a better cook than my father," the Berlin native raves. It was therefore natural that after school she completed not only an apprenticeship as a restaurant specialist, but also a second one as a chef.
She shares her father's passion for Ethiopian cuisine, and especially for injera, the main component of Ethiopian meals. The fact that the healthy sourdough flatbread is hardly available anywhere in Berlin finally gives Blen an idea. She wants to make injera available in Germany, professionally produced and on a large scale. "The project found me; it's my dream."
6,000-year-old food culture
When Blen talks about injera, she's talking about more than just 'baking bread'. "It's healthy," she says. The reason for this is the teff flour (dwarf millet). "It's considered the smallest grain in the world and is rich in minerals," Blen explains. Enriched with water, it becomes a dough that is traditionally fermented for several days, developing its characteristic tangy flavor. It's then baked on hot clay plates without being turned. The result is a flatbread with an airy, porous texture that is vegan, gluten-free, and lactose-free, making it easily digestible for a large part of the population. But although injera has been an integral part of the food culture in Ethiopia and Eritrea for at least 6,000 years, hardly anyone in this country knows about this wholesome flatbread. Blen wants to change that.
A baking machine for Germany
With a custom-designed injera baking machine, Blen plans to produce injera on a large scale and introduce it to the German market. She explains that the machine can bake up to 6,000 loaves a day. It's already installed in her café. To get the project off the ground, Blen is currently seeking investors. Until then, she's cooking up a variety of delicious treats for the neighborhood in Lichterfelde: Every Friday, Café Sidamo offers a fresh, seasonal lunch menu (reservations required) – vegetarian options are available upon request, and it's always prepared with love.