At Marhaba Eritrean and Ethiopian Cuisine and Market, each order of coffee sparks a ritual. Surrounded by shelves of African spices, Zaid Kiflemariam first roasts the beans in a small pan. Next, she grinds them in a mortar and brews them in a clay flask called a jebena. Then, she expertly fills each guest’s coffee cup to the brim.
In Eritrea, her East African home country, coffee drinking verges on sacred, Kiflemariam explains. “If you don’t fill the cup all the way up,” she says, “some older people will say, ‘No. I can’t drink this.’”
Marhaba is part of a wave of Amarillo restaurants founded by refugees and asylum seekers from across the world. In making the Panhandle city their home, the newcomers are also quietly reshaping
