The Only Ethiopian Food Truck in NYC | Street Food Icons

once you find what you really love to do like you don't even look at the time you don't look at what day it is you don't look at one month it is you don't like cuz your heart is in it you are content you are fulfilled hi sect I you don't today something that I think a lot of people don't get to experience and so if you haven't tried English it [Music] when you show up and you're expected to fail you're gonna work harder the other four truckers did not welcome us at all obviously when they see like a woman behind this is a very male-dominated industry they take it as a joke you know you have a level of like oh you're not serious enough cuz I feel like I have to represent like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be no mediocre business owner my name is Aiden garam masala burger exam here I am the owner of my clinic at be the first Ethiopian Eritrean for truck based in New York City I started machina in 2017 so we have our obviously like super famous injera bread we have some herbs with a chicken and beef the most staple vegetables that we have is mr. which is spicy red lentils we have different women which is cabbage with carrots and potatoes we have gomen collard greens and then we have like little snacks that we serve some boosters that I love growing up eating and we cut the meat the day before so when we cook it the following day the flavor is just as good as you would have it let's say in a cafe and an eritrea or you would have it in a cafe in Ethiopia if you want spicy you get that kick to get that spice but it really is bold flavorful it's not a dish that you forget about hello are you doing good I originally from Eritrea I was born and raised in Addis I deserve Ethiopian I grew up there until I was 14 my childhood was full of love always around food I would see my mom she would always have guests over so she needed to make something quick like you know she would whip up like a doves and she still her deaf sister to this day better than mine this is a style of cooking and similar to stir-fry traditionally what you're supposed to do is onion tomato garlic jalapeno and then you throw in the beef and then we also marinate the beef overnight so really holds in and locks in the flavor and we kind of throw it in the grill this dish is not supposed to be well-done the meat needs to be extremely tender it is literally straight out of the grill into a customer's plate this is what the yellow rice they got it with a yellow right you want to do a half in half you've still got time to change okay I'll get you a half and half no problem the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea came really out of nowhere I don't think anybody was really expecting it we were air trans residing in Ethiopia so my family and I were forced to leave my mom was visiting a friend of hers in the States she called us and she said guys I can't come back my family and I were separated from my mother for about a year and a half there were rumors and we're starting to hear that police was coming in in the middle of the night and taking the Eritrean men from their house and it was very terrifying for my dad what was a matter of life and death so he left he fled to Kenya and my mom was in America my sister and I were by ourselves after my parents left Ethiopia I was 14 years old when when all of this was happening my dad's guardian he told us hey pack your things and we got in the car and it was so surreal and our friends were like bye have fun you know enjoy dinner with you tomorrow both my sister and I looking back in tears and knowing that like that would be the last time we would we would see our home our whole family ended up in Charlotte North Carolina I have not been back to Ethiopia since then [Music] other cultures call it samosa we call it sambusa the thing about sambusa is they're tiny they're super delicious but they're very time consuming that's with ground beef and mixed spices and herbs we take the tortilla we create a triangle flour mixed in with water does the job a kind of uses it as a glue and you make like a nice little beautiful triangle and then you throw it in the fryer for about five minutes it comes out beautifully golden crispy we serve it with a side of Makena sauce it's a jalapeno base really good kind of clears your sinus thank you buddy I'll see you next week bye we started life we started life in Charlotte we landed on a Saturday and Monday morning we were in high school if we wanted to talk to people we had to learn English I still speak amharic which is spoken in Ethiopia and then I speak to grinya which has spoken in Eritrea there were no foreigners there were no immigrants you know it wasn't easy the first year was a blur both for my sister and I think we just kind of blocked it out of our mind I'm a Queen's girl Queens is the land of immigrants Queens is the land of amazing food Queens is really kind of like a small version of the world we're heading to Maspeth where we buy some of our spices that we may not necessarily find elsewhere cardamom was a big help and making sure that you know we maintain the same taste we maintain the same quality the black cardamom the seed fell out of the the seed yeah only the seeker the five pounder let me get one more of this and then two more red lentils and one slim piece it's very challenging the fact that I can't go to a regular grocery store and be able to find those ingredients that I want spices such as the Burberry I get it from Washington DC that's where the biggest Eritrean and Ethiopian population is America yeah it's good yep perfect from the time that we're born we probably started to eat in Jetta it's our version of a bread pretty much it's a little bit sour and has a spongy texture to it it's not the prettiest thing but it's the tastiest so this batch the batch that I made it would make about a hundred injera after all the sauces kind of soaks and the last piece of injera that's left at the bottom is the most flavorful that part I can eat all day every day when you are at home or when you usually go to a restaurants they serve you the big injera we really have to kind of think outside the box to see how you're gonna make some of these items and some of these ingredients like for truck friendly it would make a lot of our jobs easier if we had someone to kind of follow but we didn't so we kind of created our own lane and a lot of food has been just kind of like trial and error I went to University of South Carolina and I got my my business degree I went into a non-profit for a little bit I would go in the office at nine o'clock and by 10 o'clock I'm like oh my god like 5 o'clock needs to come right now and I just felt so empty I started really with the thought of like a coffee truck from coffee it went to well I should add a little bit of something to eat and finally came all right why don't I just do like an Eritrean slash Ethiopian food truck and I wasn't sure if it was gonna work out or not to be honest with you you know I worked I worked my ass off it's brutal it's tough it's tough emotionally tough mentally it's tough physically but I wanted to do it this is this is what I chose and I don't want to stop here it really was like word of mouth people started to try it and they started to get excited she did how did she make it and she was able to make it [Music] I'm extremely proud to be black to be women and to be young and to be able to do this and to represent the two countries where like you really bring them together that's pretty much like the I see on the cake for me I felt for a while that the story just ended by us leaving if you here now is getting an opportunity after going through what we went through the happy moments the sad moments the challenging moments be like really life threatening moments now I kind of get to redeem it and I get to be able to to share and talk about the things that I you know that got me excited when I was a kid and I was able to finally bring what I love which is my food my culture and then being able to kind of put it all together it's more than just the truck for me in regards to like being fulfilled my my cup of school yeah [Music]

Channel: Munchies

Views: 1,639,433

Rating: 4.906137 out of 5

Keywords: MUNCHIES, vice, food, food trucks, street food, street food icons, nyc street food, street eats, food icons, Ethiopian food, Ethiopian food near me, best Ethiopian food in nyc, best nyc food trucks, food truck near me, makina cafe, eating, Chef, nyc food carts, female entrepreneurs, businesswomen, chefs, eritrea, makina, women run businesses, best african food nyc, injera nyc, eritrean food nyc, where to find ethopian food nyc, where to find eritrean food nyc, east african food nyc

Id: 3ACpk-kbNl4

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/The_Alchemyst]

It's actually really, really good, highly recommend it if you're wandering midtown looking for work lunch

[u/CNoTe820]

https://www.zomanyc.com

Best Ethiopian I've had here, looks like it's still on the Michelin bib gourmand list too

[u/sadreaxx]

Ethiopian food is nice, try Meskerem as well on McDougal!