Name: Tesfa Ethiopian Cuisine
Address: 5352 N Broadway, Chicago, IL, 60640
Telephone: (312) 698-4481

Tesfa Ethiopian Cuisine

Edgewater · Ethiopian Community-sourced, unverified

📍 5352 N Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640

Tesfa's backstory carries more weight than most restaurant origin tales: the Sake family fled a village in southern Ethiopia near the Kenyan border through drought, tribal conflict, and war, moving from place to place and business to business before landing in Chicago.

The vegetarian sampler platter and a surprisingly good tiramisu — communal injera-and-wot sharing from a family whose restaurant grew directly out of home gatherings.

Samuel Sake opened the original Tesfa on West Wilson Avenue in Uptown in 2016 with his mother, mainly so she'd finally have a restaurant of her own after years of cooking for family gatherings — the dining room's popularity eventually forced an expansion just to fit everyone. That original Uptown spot has since closed, but the family's kept Tesfa going at a second location in Edgewater on North Broadway, serving the same injera-and-wot format: doro wat (a chicken and egg stew), yemisir wot (a vegan red lentil stew), and sambusas, all meant to be shared communally off one plate, with free tea refills built into the meal. The family has also taken the kitchen on the road, running an itinerant 'order by 10am' pop-up through DwellSocial that's shown up in Evanston, Wilmette, Libertyville, Lake Forest, and a half-dozen other North Shore suburbs — a way of reaching diners who'd never make it to Broadway on their own.

The Infatuation gave the original location an 8.3 and singled out the vegetarian sampler platter and a surprisingly good tiramisu, praise that predates the move but speaks to the kitchen, not the address. No happy hour or drink specials turned up in research — this is a food-first restaurant, and the food is doing all the talking.

Hours

Mon-Thu4-9pm

Fri4-10pm

Sat11am-10pm

Sun11am-8pm (per tesfacuisine.com official site)

🥡 Takeout unconfirmed 📞 (312) 698-4481

Amenities & accessibility

❔Takeout: unverified

❔Wheelchair access: unverified

Location

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Tesfa Ethiopian Cuisine

Tesfa's backstory carries more weight than most restaurant origin tales: the Sake family fled a village in southern Ethiopia near the Kenyan border through drought, tribal conflict, and war, moving from place to place and business to business before landing in Chicago.

Specials at Tesfa Ethiopian Cuisine