I have been eager to produce a Mexican-East African food exchange in Mexico City for a few years now and am excited to finally execute this concept alongside friends Gelila and Rahel, who are both very talented and knowledgable Ethiopian cooks. They will be joining me in CMDX for a yearly residency series.
I grew up in CDMX and go there often so I reached out to some of my local friends to set up dates with two incredible spaces to do this Etio-Mex cookout where we will use food as a conduit to share knowledge and fundraise.
Discussion will be centered around Ethiopian food and ecology, but also how it can be connected and reimagined with local Mexican ingredients. We envision this event to be a Fundraiser for Tigray and I personally want to offer different tiers of donations depending on if people are from Mexico, the Global South, or US/Europe. We will be playing an East African playlist and there might be a surprise DJ set.
This is a perfect opportunity to anyone who wants to learn about Ethiopian culture and gastronomy and support relief for our beloved siblings in Tigray.
Here is a view of our EtioMex Botanical Database” featuring the plants used for the buna, cha/i, & cacao processions.
The view below showcases the key species from the EtioMex Botanical Database highlighting plants central to the Buna, Cha/i, and Cacao processions across East Africa, South Asia, and Mesoamerica. By leveraging a relational PostgreSQL backend, we have unified the diverse global nomenclatures into a single, searchable record of the flora that drives these ancient cultural traditions.
Finally, here are the music curations we did for our past two EtioMex iterations for your enjoyment:
