Their names are Kidane Teklu and Zeru Gezehegn. For business purposes, they generally just go by Teklu and Zeru. They feel that those names are easier for people to remember and to pronounce, and in the restaurant business, that's important.
Their names are exotic, and so is their business. The two are from Ethiopia, and operate the Red Sea, a small, corner Ethiopian restaurant in West Philadelphia that serves what may be the most exotic restaurant fare in a city loaded with ethnic offerings.
Teklu and Zeru are among the estimated 600 Ethiopians who have immigrated to Philadelphia in recent years. When compared with the 10,000 Ethiopians living in the Washington area, they make up a small ethnic enclave, but its presence here has been significant enough to make it a bona fide part of the local restaurant scene.
People familiar with the cuisine of Ethiopia call it one of the world's more exotic. It is spicy, hot, characteristically full-flavored, healthful, often intricate, and sometimes so subtle as to be almost fragile.
Teklu and Zeru's restaurant, at 45th and Locust Streets, is one of three Ethiopian eateries operating in Philadelphia. Nyala, at 18th Street near Sansom, and Dahlk, at Baltimore Avenue and 47th Street, are the others.
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Most of the city's Ethiopians have settled in West Philadelphia, in the University of Pennsylvania area and beyond. Unlike the vast numbers of Western-educated Ethiopians in Washington and New York who came to this country in the days of Emperor Haile Selassie's rule, most of Philadelphia's Ethiopian immigrants are young and single, rather than couples with children.
Many of the Ethiopians here are political refugees who have fled the Communist military rule that deposed Haile Selassie in 1974. Others include refugees from the Ethiopian province of Eritrea who have escaped both the ruling military and the guerrilla warfare connected with the province's independence movement. The Ethiopians who described the situation asked that their names not be mentioned.
Some have come here as students; others are here because the city has a number of private and religious social-service groups that helped to bring them here. Once they arrive, the Ethiopian Community Association, a rather loosely organized Ethiopian community-service organization, helps them to find jobs and housing and to learn English.
