From left: Yeshareg “Yeshi” Teklemariam and her sons Yoseph and Benyam of Nile restaurant and Nile Kitchen (Photo by Marcus Ingram)
If you ask Yeshareg “Yeshi” Teklemariam about the success of her venerable family business, she’ll say, “We were blessed from the very beginning.”
Nearly 20 years ago, the matriarch of the Teklemariam family relocated to Richmond from Madison, Wisconsin, with her son Natan to take over an Ethiopian eatery on Laurel Street owned by her cousin. They dropped “Blue” from the name to signify new ownership and introduced Nile. A year later, her youngest sons, twins Benyam and Yoseph, followed. In 2013, Natan, an instrumental part of the restaurant’s growth, left the business to pursue graduate studies while his brothers and mother stayed on.
Since, the restaurant has evolved into a beloved Richmond mainstay, known for its warm service, soul-soothing Ethiopian comfort food and housemade injera flatbread. After nearly two decades in business, Nile will close its doors on Jan. 7, its 18th anniversary.
But it won’t be the last time the Teklemariams will share their misir wat (spiced red lentil stew) or gomen (slow-cooked collard greens spiked with onions, ginger and garlic) with eager diners. In the coming months, the trio will introduce a line of packaged and frozen Ethiopian meals under the name Nile Kitchen.
“We’re ready for the new model to allow us to engage with Richmond differently,” Yoseph says.
Working out of local commissary space Hatch Kitchen, their vision is for Ethiopian food to be as ubiquitous as pizza and pints of ice cream in the freezer section and to supply shoppers with naturally healthy, nourishing foods. The path to this point has been a delicately and organically timed debut.
Upon launch, Nile Kitchen will sell frozen foods and meals in stores (Photo by Justin Chesney)
“I’m going back in my emails and recipe collections, and we have been thinking about this since 2011,” Yeshi says with a gentle smile.
Soft-spoken Yeshi, 76, downplays her many culinary accomplishments. Her sons fill in the gaps with details that she humbly leaves out, from their mother’s extensive study of macrobiotics and natural healing, to her previous experience as the owner of a Madison, Wisconsin, restaurant. The brothers say that they realized her innate tenacity, and cooking skills, at an early age.
“At the Ethiopian Orthodox church we were a part of in Harlem [New York], they would rotate taking turns cooking for after service, and that’s when we knew. The biggest turnouts would be the days our mom was cooking,” Yoseph says.
Yeshi has always been feeding others. When she first came to the U.S. from Ethiopia in 1982, it was her co-workers. “My whole freezer was full of small containers filled with stew, lentils and different varieties of Ethiopian food, and I would deliver to my colleagues. They’d order on Fridays, injera and stews.” she says.
A mother of six, she moved often during her career with various arms of the United Nations, spending time in Africa; North Korea; New York; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Colorado; Fargo, North Dakota; and Wisconsin.
Not long after Yeshi and Natan moved to Richmond, when Benyam and Yoseph were living in Wisconsin, their brother called and encouraged them to come, too. Looking for an opportunity to return to the East Coast, the twins took a chance and joined their family.
“We’ve always been family oriented,” Yoseph says. “Six weeks later, we were here, and there was an energy and attraction to Richmond at that time. We became closely connected with that community.”
Benyam and Yoseph of Nile restaurant and Nile Kitchen (Photo by Marcus Ingram)
With the mindset that they are serving guests rather than customers, Nile attracted faithful diners from across the state and region who followed them from their original location on Laurel Street to a short stint in Carytown and finally their current, mostly takeout, spot in Church Hill. Despite being asked, and heavily encouraged, over the years to open a second location, they refrained.
“You expand, you can lose on that consistency,” Yeshi says firmly, shaking her head. “Everything is done right; we don’t cut corners.”
In 2007, however, Yeshi partnered with Ellwood Thompson’s to sell a line of packaged vegan entrees. The arrangement lasted for a few months before Nile secured space on the Carytown grocer’s hot bar, offering six to eight vegan dishes. That residency continued for 13 years, up until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, a staff member at Hatch Kitchen reached out to the family via Instagram. The Teklemariams knew the current kitchen director, Sam Krivanec, with whom they had worked at Ellwood’s over a decade prior. Shortly after, they spotted Taste of Ethiopia, a Harlem-based frozen food purveyor, in stores — it was the extra affirmation and nudge they needed to move forward.
“We keep saying it’s funny how things work out. It’s been there the whole time.” —Benyam Teklemariam
“We were like, ‘OK, communities are getting open to seeing Ethiopian food packaged,’” Yoseph says. “All of these signs were like, this is it, the timing. We waited a little while to announce it, because these families we’ve grown with, we knew [closing the restaurant] was going to be a hard thing to share.”
Full service catering is being implemented now, while packaged products are in the final stage of development for Nile Kitchen. Meals such as yellow split peas, along with two of the most popular dishes at the restaurant, collards and lentil stew, will be sold in 10-ounce frozen pouches. The Teklemariams envision a full line of Ethiopian products in the future, such as a berbere spice blend and awaze sauce, a spicy, fragrant condiment. They also plan to offer a weekly menu of ready-to-eat meals for local delivery.
“We know what we’re going to start off with, but it’s the other things that can grow and we will grow into,” Benyam says. “It’s like we’re graduating. We want to see this project through, and it’s in the works. We keep saying it’s funny how things work out. It’s been there the whole time.”
For the latest updates on product launch, special events and weekly menu offerings, visit thenilekitchen.com
