No doubt you have never heard of it: Star Bukri’s Catering, a name that begs parsing. Bukri is the owner, and her sauces are on the shelf: “Experience the unique flavors of traditional Ethiopian Abyssinian cuisine from Bukri’s family recipes,” the jars promise. She wanted to make it easier for people to make the bases at home. But you could also come here and find it in person.
Star Bukri’s Catering is wedged on the end of a commercial strip in Garland that hardly even qualifies as a strip, just a pet grooming place and travel insurance storefront strung together. Nearby are a car wash station and the Home Depot behemoth that shadows it, and also Gojo Ethiopian restaurant. But here, on the corner of Jupiter and Buckingham Roads, you find yourself in a tiny, cozy, warm Ethiopian home-cooking to-go place, surrounded by walls that are lime-yellow and speak of gored-gored and kitfo. It fills a kind of in-between niche, not a formal restaurant, but more than a gas station that sells fluffy, spongy injera. It occupies a sweet spot. And people know it.
Panettone crowns the counter this time of year, along with plastic containers of baklava and roasted barley and peanuts. Thermos dispensers pour hot streams of tea, one so thick with fresh ginger, it’s almost brothy; the other steeped with cardamom and other spices. There is coffee, too, if the machine happens to be working. The owner, Bukri herself, is there in the mornings, usually. The illustrated menus on the wall will tell you it’s then they serve ful, mashed fava beans and feta, with Ethiopian butter and toasted bread, or the scrambled-egg dish fit fit. It’s when Bukri is there that you might be treated to a full coffee ceremony, the aroma of roasted beans filling the snug space. It’s quite remarkable, the flavors that come out of this humble place with a few tables, where people wait, or, in my case, tuck into their to-go containers, unable to resist.
Look for the vegetarian combo platter (a steal at $7.99), piled with gomen, braised, rough-chopped collards that leave a resonant note of ginger that warms you. (Ethiopian food is similar to Southern food in many ways, and there are reasons for that, amid our borrowings from Africa.) Slow-cooked green beans and carrots are caramel-y around the edges. Potatoes and carrots, the colors bold, the textures satisfying, are redolent with ginger again. Lentils come seasoned with the Ethiopian base of long-stewed onions and tomatoes laced with Berbere spice. And shiro is as good as any you’ll find, the split-pea purée rich, nutty, and silken. Everything comes with rolls of injera tucked on top, already soaking up the sauces.
Those seeking a classic meat dish should turn to doro wat—with chicken thighs and a hard-cooked egg—which bathes in a sauce that’s dark, almost brooding red. Long-stewed tomatoes and onions are fierce with Berbere spice. Mounds of the gingery gomen and ayr, cottage cheese, come tucked on the side, useful to cool your mouth. (If you look closely, you’ll notice that the two main sauces Bukri sells are alecha kulet, the cooking paste of onions and garlic; and kay kulet, the fiery-red base for doro wot and other dishes.)
This is where those in the know come when they crave the flavors so particular to Ethiopian food. The day I went, recently, a feeling of fall gripped the air. It was crisp outside. Inside, the flavors were all warmth—winter woes chased away by spice.
