THENEWYORKER,JULY27, 2020 9
PHOTOGRAPH BY BUBI CANAL FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
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TABLESFORTWO
Ras Plant Based
739 Franklin Ave., Brooklyn
Many of the recipes that the chef Romeo
Regalli uses in the kitchen at Ras Plant
Based—the restaurant that he and his
wife, Milka, opened in Crown Heights
in March—have been passed down
through generations. A number of them
came from Romeo’s grandmother, a pas-
sionate home cook who died last year, in
Ethiopia, at the age of a hundred and
four. Yet the dish that seems most likely
to have a long, storied history, Mama’s
Tofu, traces its origins only as far back
as May, when Romeo’s mother texted,
from Addis Ababa, a photo of what she
had made for dinner. “I was, like, ‘Oh,
my God, that looks so good!’” Romeo
recalled the other day. She rattled off the
ingredients: tofu, tomatoes, onions, and
jalapeños. After she mailed him a batch
of her homemade spice mix (the exact
contents of which he keeps tight to his
chest), Romeo made an approximation,
and promptly added it to the menu.
The story behind Mama’s Tofu reflects
the restaurant’s ethos: dynamic, adaptable,
rooted in but by no means bound by tra-
dition. Romeo and Milka, who were both
born in Ethiopia, met while working at
Milka’s mother’s Ethiopian restaurant,
Awash, on the Upper West Side, and had
long wanted to open a place of their own,
with a vegan menu. Although meat figures
prominently in Ethiopian cuisine, vegan
dishes are common, too; for more than a
hundred and fifty days a year, Ethiopian
Orthodox Christians abstain from animal
products, in accordance with religious
fasting. The couple wanted to both feature
their favorite fasting dishes and rejigger
typical meat preparations with substitutes
like crumbled pea protein, to “cater to
those who are trying to transition to a
vegan life style,” Romeo explained.
Ras Plant Based was up and running
for all of a week before the pandemic
forced the Regallis to close the dining
room they had worked so hard to get
ready, commissioning colorful murals
and arranging patio-style furniture for
a breezy al-fresco vibe. Cutting back on
staff and shifting to takeout meant par-
ing down the menu and reducing their
hours. They have recently added limited
outdoor seating, but a playful brunch
menu, offering cauliflower wings and
waffles and Ethiopian breakfast classics,
remains on hold for now.
Even in an abridged form, Ras is an
exciting addition to Franklin Avenue’s
ever-bustling restaurant row. Flaky
sambusas (the Ethiopian equivalent to
what’s called a samosa in South Asia and
elsewhere), stuffed with either lentils or
chopped cabbage, onion, and bell pepper,
come two per order. As soon as their
slightly honeyed, deep-fried scent hit
my nose the other night, I knew that I
should have added at least a half-dozen
to my takeout cart; that thought was
confirmed after I dipped them into Ras’s
glossy-red awaze, a saucy paste usually
made with berbere (Ethiopia’s national
spice mix, which includes chili pepper,
ginger, basil, and fenugreek) that here
releases a balanced, slow-building heat.
For a cold dish called fitfit, house-made
injera—the porous, slightly sticky na-
tional flatbread of Ethiopia, made from
a deliciously sour fermented teff-flour
dough—is torn into pieces and com-
bined with tomato, onion, and jalapeño,
all doused in a puckery lime vinaigrette.
More injera, rolled into squishy cigars, to
be unfurled for scooping, comes with a
vegan sampler platter, which showcases
an array of fasting dishes, including mis-
sir, long-simmered red lentils complexly
layered with more of the secret spice mix
(I picked up cardamom), and fasolia, a
slick tangle of string beans and car-
rots slow-cooked until silky and sweet.
In two iterations of tibs, for which beef
is usually both fried and stewed with on-
ions and berbere, the meat is replaced
by seitan and cremini mushrooms, re-
spectively, the former bearing a texture as
satisfying as pork belly, the latter with an
earthiness enhanced by sprigs of rosemary.
Both are wonderful sopped up with more
injera or with turmeric-stained steamed
rice laced with fresh black pepper. Both
are worthy of ancestral legacy—and how
lucky we are to be welcomed into this
family. (Dishes $5-$19.)
—Hannah Goldfield
