I’ve been eating Ferehiwot Sheffield’s sega wat for almost two years now, ever since we first met in the fall of 2022 at her Emeye Ethiopian Cuisine tent at the Queens Night Market. It was love at first bite between me and the mound of incredibly rich, complex, and legit spicy beef stew that Sheffield serves with vegetables atop a semicircle of spongy injera.
It’s an incredible plate of food. I’ve had the sega wat at Emeye at least three times since then, but only recently did Sheffield school me on exactly why her version of this dish, which is as common in her native city of Addis Ababa as, say, cheeseburgers are here, is so unusually delicious—and distinct from any other you’re likely to find in New York City.
“When I moved here in 2012, first in Red Hook and now in Sunnyside, it was so hard for me to find, not Ethiopian food in general because there’s a lot of that, but real injera,” Sheffield told Hell Gate. “In Ethiopia, injera is made only with teff, which is a grain. We don’t mix it with anything. It’s healthier and it’s gluten-free. If you mix it with wheat flour, which is what most restaurants here do, it’s more like eating bread. With only teff flour, it just tastes better. It tastes like home.”
Sheffield told me it took her about seven years to master making her teff-only injera in New York City—something about the water here just makes it really difficult, she said—but as far as I’m concerned, speaking as someone who delights in tearing off chunks of the stuff to scoop up mouthfuls of meat, it was worth the effort.
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