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Sunny Saturdays at Kefa Café
BY TOM THOMAS
Photo: Julie Wiatt |
Even on a dismal day,
the radiant, smiling faces of sisters Abeba and Lene
Tsegaye light up Kefa Café, their little coffee
shop in downtown Silver Spring.
Our daughter discovered the coffee shop at Bonifant
Street and Georgia Avenue five years ago, and my wife
and I quickly developed the habit of Saturday morning
coffee there. Except for when we're on out-of-town jaunts,
we usually spend Saturday mornings at Kefa, sometimes
with friends, as do other patrons.
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Abeba (Abi) and Lene are from Ethiopia by way of Ohio and
Indiana. Kefa's name is from Ethiopia as well. And what a
fitting name for a coffee shop. According to a plaque on the
wall, coffee originated in the Kefa region of Ethiopia, and
the word "coffee" is believed to be derived from
it.
Legend has it that 1400 years ago, a Kefa goat herder named
Kali watched his goats become lively after eating the leaves
and red berries from the arabica bush. For centuries
Ethiopians guarded their coffee, not allowing its exportation.
But once the word got out, people around the world began to
enjoy the dark, hot brew. Today, we drink coffee more than
almost any other beverage.
Kefa Café is unique in this day of chain coffeehouses
and restaurants. You almost always see the same two smiling
faces behind the counter, and you often see the same patrons.
Its ambiance is also quaint and distinctive. Except for the
harsh grinding of the expresso machine, the sounds are soft:
the murmur of good conversations, the giggles of children
discovering toys or the sounds of friends meeting friends.
Toys on the floor in one corner, political discussions, tasteful
music, smiling-baby pictures on the wall, civic planning sessions,
lively literary conversationsthey're all there. Where else
but Kefa's would you find a grown man sitting on the floor
beside another table playing blocks with his 2-year-old son;
or a father reading Winnie the Pooh to his pre-school
daughter.
Any way you look at it, Kefa is an artistic achievement,
complete to the yellow walls. A watercolor of the restaurant,
the outside of which is also yellow, looks similar to the
house where Van Gogh lived and painted in Aix, France. Paintings
by local artists adorn other walls, and tasteful jazz blends
with the aroma of fresh coffee.
"It's a family affair," said Abeba, the younger
sister. Her brother Abiy, a philosophy professor in the Ethiopian
capital of Addis Ababa, came up with the idea of the coffee
shop while in graduate school. Lene's husband Karl selects
the music.
Lene and Abeba have been running Kefa for more than six years.
After graduating from Defiance College in Ohio with a degree
in business management, Abeba worked for a brokerage firm
in Indiana for
a year and Lene attended Indiana University before the two
relocated to Maryland and became restaurateurs along with
their older brother Abiy.
Patrons' letters attest to the quality of the coffee, the
pastries, and the smiling friendliness of the sisters.
One corner is reserved for children with blocks and books.
On the other hand, you might find a literary discussion in
progress. Jim Paton, author of Shake, a mystery thriller
set in Portland, Oregon, is occasionally a Saturday visitor.
If Kefa's isn't serving coffee to novelists, consider that
the café is the setting for a scene in James George
Pelecanos' recent mystery novel Hell to Pay. Abi and
Lene keep an autographed copy of the thriller behind the counter.
The coffee is not limited to Ethiopian Yergacheffe. The selection
includes Sumatran Mandheling, shade-grown and organic Guatemalan,
and even hazelnut.
The good taste at Kefa even goes into the food. Having last
enjoyed raspberry-jam filled scones at the Puyallup, Washington
Fair as a child, I found Kefa scones satisfied my memories
and my taste buds. A local baker supplied the pastries until
he hung up his baker's hat recently. When a customer learned
Kefa no longer carried the scones, she offered to bake some
herself and bring them in.
At Kefa's, soup is a featured item at lunch. Not only can
you eat the soup, you can dine on the soup container. Wednesdays
and Fridays it's homemade tomato soup, other days, it's the
soup of the day in a boule, the round bread usually associated
with dip at parties. You can use the cubes of bread carved
out of the middle to dip in the soup.
Kefa might be called the little shop around the corner, but
it could also be called the Kefa Restaurant and Conference
center, since it consists of two roomsthe main, larger room
with four tables, and the other a smaller room with four tables
off to the side.
The smaller adjacent room has been the venue for more than
one Saturday conference. You might find a committee of women
sipping coffee, papers spread around them, mapping out alternatives
for dealing with the overcrowding at Blair High School.
My wife prefers the smaller "conference room,"
as she calls it, where bright sunlight streams through the
large windows.
This has led to a running gag with Abi. Over the last three
years we have joked that she always arranges sunlight especially
for me. Just before New Year's we went in on a sunny morning,
and Lene, whose smile is almost as bright as the sun, said,
"my sister isn't here, but she phoned in your order."
And not too long ago on a rainy Saturday, Abi delivered a
message through her sister.
"Abi didn't feel well today," said Lene, whose
flair for one-liners is fascinating. "She wasn't up to
it."
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