Café Colucci
Ethiopian restaurant · Paradise Park
5849 San Pablo Ave, Oakland, CA 94608
Highlights
Flavorful Ethiopian eats with plentiful vegetarian options & spice shop
Flavorful Ethiopian eats with plentiful vegetarian options & spice shop
"A family run joint founded by Fetlework Tefferi in 1991, this is considered to be Oakland’s flagship Ethiopian institution. Driven by an organic, from-the-source approach, the restaurant helped to establish Ethiopian vegan food in the region with local-sourced ingredients and fresh spices imported directly from Ethiopia by Brundo, an Ethiopian spice shop that is housed inside the cafe. Though known for their fresh dishes, don’t sleep on their vast beverage selection: floral Ethiopian coffees; spiced Ethiopian teas; Ethiopian beers; and the Fat Belly Bessobela, an Ethiopian basil mocktail." - Alan Chazaro
"There are Ethiopian spots in abundance in Oakland—from the Lake Merritt mainstay Enssaro to the casual cafe Alem’s Coffee. Cafe Colucci in North Oakland is one of the city’s most dynamic. This fun, casual all-day spot doubles as a spice shop (for Cafe Colucci’s Brundo Spice Company) that's stocked with berbere, hop leaves, alicha kimem, and more. You’ll watch workers make spongy injera at the bar counter. And the serene patio is ideal for drinking ginger-lemon kombuchas or anything from their menu of housemade drinks. The crispy, beef-stuffed sambusas, garlicky buticha, and satisfying meat and vegetarian samplers with heaps of deeply spiced mitten shiro and gomen are the must-orders." - lani conway, julia chen 1
"Cafe Colucci is collaborating with Mad Marvlus Cider for their family-style menu on March 29th only (price TBA). Five courses of Ethiopian dishes, like branzino assa tibs and kitfo, will be paired with low-intervention ciders." - julia chen 1
"The Ethiopian restaurant in North Oakland is a buzzy, all-day spot that doubles as a spice shop for their Brundo Spice Company. They also have a peaceful back patio. You have to walk down a never-ending hallway before emerging into the backyard with sail shades, mulch-covered ground, and tables just waiting for plates of crispy, beef-stuffed sambusas, garlicky buticha, and satisfying meat and vegetarian samplers with heaps of deeply spiced mitten shiro and gomen." - julia chen 1, lani conway
"Daniel Aderaw Yeshiwas, the restaurateur and managing partner, says “I realized it’s really, really hard to even get the support to open up a restaurant in the Bay Area, even if you had the capital, even if you had the business plan,” and adds, “Just talking to some of my peers, who also mentioned having a lot of struggles being able to find a space, needing this really big proof of concept, and really needing a following to make it in the Bay Area — it’s hard when you’re just starting from nothing.” Knowing that difficult path, he helped formalize the Brundo Chef Residency to clear a way for chefs to get more restaurant experience: it is a six-month residency prioritizing chefs of the African diaspora in which the featured chef will host a monthly dinner party series on the patio, with access to the restaurant’s kitchen and wholesale accounts for ordering food, and a chance to collaborate with the bar team on drinks. The residency includes built-in advising and feedback sessions with a selection committee that includes Yeshiwas and chef Geoff Davis of Oakland’s Burdell, as well as former residency participants Selasie Dotse (who used the kitchen for their Ghanaiane le aɖe Test Kitchenpop-ups and is now executive sous chef at Elmina in Washington, D.C.) and Leonard Roberts III (chef de cuisine at Reve Bistro in Lafayette). Dinners are also an opportunity for the chef-in-residency to get marketing materials—the program provides a photographer and videographer for the events—and finalists will do a tasting with the selection committee and receive feedback on their menus even if they’re not selected. Thanks to a grant from the Heinz Black Kitchens Initiative, the program has been able to offer more perks and formal structure; Yeshiwas says the ideal candidate is “somebody who has a lot of culinary experience, somebody who’s maybe working inside of a kitchen now, somebody who feels really tied to a diasporic identity and really wants to showcase that.” The eventual hope is that by the end of the six months the chef-in-residence will be able to leverage the experience into a new position or to get their business idea into new and different spaces, and, as Yeshiwas puts it, “We’re really, really excited to have taken this from a small idea at a farmers market to something that has funding, that’s become very structured, and involves members of the community, with intersections of culture, music, food, and Ethiopian cuisine and other diasporic cuisines.” Applications for the Brundo Chef Residency are open through Sunday, March 9; interested chefs are asked to fill out an application at Brundo.com." - Dianne de Guzman
