Mélange Foods, Inc. will house chef Elias Taddesse’s beefy burgers, berbere-spiced fried chicken, and Ethiopian taco eateries

D.C. restaurateur Elias Taddesse is leaning on his Michelin-starred credentials and classic French training to helm three fast casual eateries serving gourmet fast food — all under the same roof in Shaw’s Atlantic Plumbing Development (2108 8th Street NW).

Mélange Foods, Inc.

On Monday, May 12, Taddesse launches Mélange Foods, Inc., a 96-seat restaurant he describes as a culinary incubator celebrating his Ethiopian roots and personal story with bold flavors.

Mélange Foods opens with two restaurants that are already popular with D.C. diners: Doro Soul Food, Taddesse’s riff on American soul food focused on fried chicken with Ethiopian flavors; and Mélange DC, the chef’s burger joint that pays homage to his dual identity as an Ethiopian American. Taddesse’s third concept, Moya, will center on Ethiopian-influenced tacos and rolls out later this spring.

Taddesse originally opened Mélange DC in 2020 in Mount Vernon Triangle. Three years later, the burger bar moved to a tiny takeout-only space in Shaw with his new Doro Soul Food. He recently closed that location to move them both to Mélange Foods at the nightlife-filled intersection of U Street and Florida Avenue.

Taddesse, named Eater DC’s 2021 Chef of the Year, plans to develop all three restaurants under one roof until they’re ready to strike out on their own — kind of like baby birds leaving the nest. “Let’s say we find a location that works best for Doro … then Doro’s going to move into that space,” Taddesse explained.

Rey Lopez/Eater DC

Moya is a throwback to Taddesse’s time as a Timberland-wearing, hip-hop music listening student in early-2000s France, where he attended culinary school at Institut Paul Bocuse, before going on to cook at several Michelin-starred restaurants in France and New York City, including the elite Caviar Russe, which earned its Michelin star during his one-year tenure as executive chef.

The international school, since renamed Institut Lyfe, attracted lots of students from Mexico. Taddesse befriended several of them, and they affectionately called him “gringo.”

“I was the ‘gringo’ just because I came from here and was the only one who spoke English,” says Taddesse. Now, the nickname has stuck.

Taddesse said he’s always enjoyed Mexican culture and making tacos. He found community with Mexican chefs and remembers cooking with them in their homes in France. In New York City, he spent a decade living in Manhattan’s Spanish Harlem neighborhood and Astoria in Queens, which is about a quarter Hispanic.

Fusing Ethiopian and Mexican flavors was a no-brainer for Taddesse because both cultures serve comfort foods that he can easily translate. “When you look at Mexican cuisine, you essentially have a vehicle which is the tacos, and then you have your stews, your beef steaks and all of that,” says Taddesse, comparing tacos to using injera in Ethiopian cuisine to take bites of beef tibs and stews, “which can really work very easily with the Mexican flavors.”

Rey Lopez

From Mélange DC, expect the greatest hits from the 2023 James Beard Award semifinalist for Emerging Chef. The beloved dry-aged burgers include the Classic, Italian, and Double Decker. Taddesse will throw specials into the mix and add a new burger dubbed the Frenchie.

He’s also tinkering with adding a berbere chocolate ice cream to the menu. Berbere is an Ethiopian spice mix that includes dried chiles, Ethiopian cardamom, fenugreek, and other aromatics. “Paprika chocolates are very popular,” says Taddesse. “Berbere is not necessarily that spicy — usually, it’s more aromatic and it depends on how you prepare it.”

As for Doro Soul Food, Taddesse will replace chicken wings with chicken tenders — which will simplify production, pickup, and preparation, he says.

He’s branching out by adding a fried Atlantic cod sandwich to the menu, since so many soul food restaurants offer some sort of fried fish sandwich. It’s also a nod to the Ethiopian tradition of eating fish during fasting periods. Taddesse will serve the Shiro Meda sandwich with shredded cabbage, a zesty Ethiopian tomato salad called timatim, and a gribiche sauce, which usually accompanies poached fish.

“Gribiche is like a very classic French sauce essentially,” says Taddesse. “It’s made with shredded eggs, a lot of capers, parsley, tarragon, and lettuce and then citrus and vinegar. Think of it as like a tartar sauce.”

Rey Lopez

Rey Lopez

In Mélange Foods’ second phase, Taddesse is rolling out a bar program that includes a berbere margarita. The bar menu will include charred lamb meatballs marinated in a blend of herbs and yogurt. Taddesse calls the dish “The Champ” because it won the DC Meatball Battle, a March charity event that involved seven other local chefs.

Taddesse opens Mélange Foods about a year after taking a self-imposed hiatus from creating new dishes to rest, get married, and have a baby son. He had not taken a break since before the pandemic.

“If you’re well rested, you’re more calm, things become less chaotic,” he says. “And when I came back I was more methodical, I would say, in the steps I was taking and that led to this opportunity.”

During that break, the new D.C. location of F1 Arcade collaborated with Taddesse to serve “The National” fried chicken sandwich, which he debuted at Mélange to honor doro wat, a slow-cooked spicy Ethiopian chicken stew. The arcade’s version of the sandwich featured crisp fried chicken with kibbeh aioli, turmeric slaw, and a fried egg between onion brioche buns.

Rey Lopez/Eater DC

Looking ahead, Taddesse plans on opening his long-awaited Mélange by Chef Elias as an anchor of the Bridge District development near Anacostia. The high-end restaurant combining contemporary French cuisine with traditional Ethiopian flavors is slated to open at the end of this year. This restaurant will focus more on quality of product, sourcing premium ingredients, and presentation.

“I’m just trying to cook at every level,” says Taddesse. “The same rigor, the same training, the same thought processes, the same sourcing culture comes in… everything that I try to do.”

Dear LinkedIn Dad,

When I scrolled past your LinkedIn headline, proudly announcing your “dad” status, I paused. It’s possible that, depending on how many hours of sleep I got the night before, I may have snorted, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

Let me be clear: I think it’s great that you’re a dad, and I can appreciate that you’re proud of it. My moment of skepticism is more about what it means to be able to say, proudly, that you’re a parent in a forum where you’re also supposed to be a worker. I don’t know what that’s like.

When I returned to work in 2020, just four short weeks after an emergency C-section, delirious from lack of sleep, on two different antibiotics for post-op infections and mastitis (and maybe peeing my pants a little bit, in the literal sense?), I immediately felt conspicuous.

This was not just because there was, quite possibly, spit-up in my hair during most Zoom calls.

Unlike my male colleagues, who flashed wallet-size newborn photos and talked about how fatherhood had made them better, more empathetic, and well-rounded, I was suddenly an object of concern.

Instead of asking, “Is that a family name?” or “Who does he look like?” it was more like:

“Do you think you’ll keep working?”
“You know, there’s always an option to go part-time.”
“Does your husband help out?”

Every one of these felt like an indictment. I was on notice that, if I let anyone know that, yes, balancing all of this is really hard, I’d be confirming their suspicion that mothers couldn’t prioritize their careers. It was immediately obvious that I needed to be not only as good as I was before but better.

Any mistakes I made would be proof that I—all moms—wasn’t up to the task. When I announced I’d earned a new title, the tepid congratulations would come mixed with “You know, the kids are only little for such a short while. There’ll be time for all that later.” I wonder, LinkedIn Dad, what they say to you when you get a promotion? Does anyone question if you will be able to balance four-year-old ballet recitals with your new consulting gig / executive coaching startup? I’m guessing no.

LinkedIn Dad, do you ever hide your status as a parent at work? Because I do, even as it continually announces itself via calls from daycare during the work day or the pacifier that fell out of my laptop bag at my annual review (timing!).

But unlike my coworkers who are dads, when I prioritize my children, I am considered unreliable and lacking focus. If a pacifier fell out of your bag in the middle of a meeting, people would think that was adorable, wouldn’t they? Would they laugh because how funny, a grown man with a pacifier?

Or would they start planning a reorganization where a twenty-five-year-old named Bradford whose dad plays racquetball with your boss is suddenly your new supervisor?

“Bradford here comes to us from Eighthoursofsleep.io! He majored in accounting and lives in NYC with his dog and fiancée. Give Bradford a warm welcome, everyone!”

Look, we all know that a man stepping away from the office to care for his kids is a novelty. How nice of him to help his wife. He must be very caring and selfless. He’s modern, evolved, and committed to equity. I think when you highlighted your “dad” status, you were maybe basking in this glow, whether you admit it to yourself or not. Lead gen visionary, servant leader, dad. Hell yeah, now that’s got the juice.

When I am needed at home during work hours, there is no such fanfare, only questions like “But didn’t your son just have norovirus?”

LinkedIn Dad, dads are celebrated for work while also parenting on the side. We call it “hustle” and listen to their TED Talks about how they spent the early years of their kids’ lives grinding and building an empire. We do this as they tiptoe over the eternally low bar for what dads need to contribute at home. I want to ask them, “Who was watching your children while you were out changing the world?” but I think I probably know.

Listen, my intention here is not to declare you my enemy but rather to make you aware of the considerable differences in parenting experiences at work (I’ll be honest, my guy, I don’t know how much you’ve thought about it)—and to encourage you to build a team where being a mom is considered a strength because, well, it is.

Despite my organization and time-management skills absolutely skyrocketing since my first child was born (out of necessity, I can now prepare a press release and a bottle simultaneously), men are more often executive decision makers in the office. I’m wondering, what would it look like if being a “dad” at work was more about ensuring your coworkers have adequate parental leave and enough sick and vacation time to appropriately care for themselves and their children?

What if being a “dad” at work meant being conscious enough to avoid scheduling networking opportunities after hours and on weekends or, at the very least, balancing these with similar options during the work day? Can we imagine a workplace where we consider childcare, breastfeeding, and other parenting needs when planning travel? In fact, can we stop assuming that every worker has a stay-at-home fairy godmother (notice we never hear about godfathers in this context) and work backward from there?

Could you speak up when you hear the “dog whistles” about commitment, focus, and motherhood? Can you ask yourself what it would take for, not just your kids, but everyone in your office’s kids to have present parents whose brains aren’t constantly marinating in cortisol? Can you, at the very minimum, ask yourself if you are delegating a task to your wife, mom, coworker, or other adjacent woman because it really is her job or because you just think it shouldn’t be yours?

LinkedIn Dad, I think you can do this. I’ve given you a to-do list, which I’m told is necessary for dads to understand what needs done around the house (and, I guess, the world).

If you do, I promise I won’t roll my eyes at your LinkedIn headline anymore. If we succeed at this thing, I may even add “mom” to mine.

Best,
Lauren

photo by mtrrtm

“Dear PoPville,

Last night at/after Cucina MORINI’s $7 martini happy hour, RFK Jr. and a few other folks (staffers?) came in. A small group of patrons started loudly chanting

“POOOOP” over and over. They pivoted when he walked past them to “POOP FROM A BUTTHOLE.”

Donald Trump’s war on everything halfway good and decent continues apace, with the gratuitous cancellation of an Education Department grant that funds children’s educational programming on PBS. That’ll save $23 million that can now go to about a minute and a half of tax cuts for billionaires, or a month or so of Donald Trump’s golfing trips. (Haha, stupid libs! Complaining about the millions of dollars his golfing costs is so 2017! Everyone’s fine with it now, get some new material!)

Did anyone really vote for this? We don’t remember Trump promising during the campaign that he’d gut children’s programming on public TV; maybe it slipped in there somewhere between the shark-or-electric-boat musings and the weird dancing. Still, it’ll probably win some support from the Usual Gang of Shitheads who think trolling is the entire purpose of government, i.e., the entire Republican Party.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said yesterday that it was informed of the cancellation of the “Ready to Learn” grant Friday. The grant has funded PBS Kids programming for preschool and early elementary kids, including “Lyla in the Loop,” “Work It Out Wombats!” and “Molly of Denali.” The main characters in the two non-wombat shows are little girls of color, which may have had something to do with the defunding. For all we know, somebody at Education may have thought “Molly of Denali” was a sneaky attempt to violate Trump’s renaming of that Alaskan mountain to “Mt. McKinley,” although the show debuted in 2019.

Madi Biederman, an Ed Department comms bot, explained the final $23 million tranche of Ready to Learn funds had to be eliminated because the program was funding “racial justice educational programming for 5-8 year-old children. This is not aligned with Administration priorities.” Wouldn’t want kids in the Lower 48 knowing that there are Native Alaskans, after all, because all Americans are equal, meaning exactly the same, meaning white. Certainly not African-American / Jamaican like that jerk Lyla.

Biederman went on to explain that the “Trump Department of Education will prioritize funding that supports meaningful learning and improving student outcomes, not divisive ideologies and woke propaganda.” We haven’t watched any of these shows, but previous Ready to Learn grant recipients included shows like “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow,” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” which were full of terrible diversity, a wonderful actor who was Kunta Kinte and probably made kids gay with those rainbows, and also a big red dog, which is probably racist to white dogs.

The Ready to Learn grants were established by Congress in 1992, so if PBS sues over this, the network can point out that Trump is violating the Constitution again. Maybe a court will think that matters. Whether that results in the funding being restored is another question; maybe ask all the federal employees who got their jobs back but were then placed on leave forever.

The most recent five-year Ready to Learn grant, which was supposed to run from 2020 through September of this year, was actually approved during Trump’s first term, under then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, including continued funding for “Molly of Denali” and for “Lyla in the Loop,” although the latter show only reached the air last year. Guess DeVos just wasn’t racist enough somehow.

This latest shitty move follows up Trump’s executive order attempting to kill PBS and NPR. CPB president and CEO Patricia Harrison noted that Ready to Learn has been funding PBS Kids programming for over 30 years, and that the grants have always received strong bipartisan support during that time, thanks to the shows’ “proven educational value in advancing early learning skills for all children.” Yes, even the children who are Black or Native Alaskan. She promised to “work with Congress and the Administration to preserve funding for this essential program,” for all the good it will do.

More dangerously, Harrison said that “Nearly every parent has raised their kids on public broadcasting’s children’s content,” a statement that no doubt prompted howls of outrage from some fundagelicals who have been boycotting PBS ever since that demon-spawned 2019 episode of “Arthur” with the gay wedding, or who have been mad at “Sesame Street” from the start over all that godless race-mixing. Or mad at “Sesame Street” for including a kid whose family was food insecure. Or mad at “Sesame Street” for Oscar the Grouch watching “Pox News.” Or mad at “Sesame Street” for causing Benghazi, yes really. Or mad at “Sesame Street” for Big Bird getting the COVID vaccine (not even on the show, but in a tweet). Or mad at “Sesame Street” for that 2020 CNN town hall about racism, which doesn’t exist anymore except against white people.

OK, well then we suppose we should rethink our initial position. Obviously some people voted for this. The very worst people.

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[Deadline / NYT / Open Culture]

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"At the same time that the number of people in the U.S. who claim Native identity has exploded - increasing 85% in just 10 years - the number of people formally enrolled in Tribes has not." (intro)

There are notations in the 1830 census of Native American heads of household who were also owners of (black) slaves (57-8).  Because they owned slaves they were recorded as "white" in the census. (87-8)

"Cases of white men marrying and the divorcing Creek women to qualify for a land allotment were rampant.  Neah Micco, a Creek headman noted that 'desperate men are rapidly collecting among us, under color of authority as Indian countrymen, are seizing and occupying our most valuable lands.'" (89)

A Native girl raised by an Amish family found herself "too dark" to be accepted in an Iowa community, but "too white" when she's in the Navajo Nation.  While there she picks up new vocabulary ("rez words"), but on a return to Iowa "she performs the careful dance of code-switching, reverting back to the Iowa way of speaking, with all the midwestern politeness she can muster." (92)

During the 1832 Creek Census, the (white) census-takers had a powerful incentive to undercount Natives because that number determined land allotments, so fewer Natives would mean more land available for Whites.  Those who were listed on the census as white rather than Native would then have descendants generations later who assume they are full-blood white. (94)

In modern times there is an incentive for Tribes to "disenroll" members, in part stimulated by the sharing of casino revenues or land and services on a reservation. (95)  The Pechanga Band in Southern California disenrolled 250 members, including posthumously (and thus their descendants).  The enrolled population is only 1,400, so the process resulted in an increase in "per cap" from casino revenues tom $15K to $40K per month. (98)

Hitler and the Nazis knew of the American process of displacing and disenfranchising Native peoples, and applied the same principles to the Jews in Germany.  

Lots of detail re the term "blood quantum" - the determination of what % of a person's blood is Native vs white or black.  Equivalent to the slave era process of designating mixed-race slaves as mulattos or quadroons or octaroons etc.

Details re the immense tragedy of the "Trail of Tears" during the forced removal of Natives from areas in the southeastern U.S.  (Chap 5 "Remove").

Details about forced "acculturation" (kidnapping of Native children and placement of them in boarding schools).  "In many cases, children were purposely separated from their siblings or other members of their Tribes.  Schools forcibly mixed together children from different Tribes, to prevent their use of Native languages of the practice of cultural traditions." (116)  "Indian agent Fletcher J. Cowart recalled that "it became necessary to visit the [Native American] camps unexpectedly with a detachment of Indian police, and [to] seize such children as were proper and take them away to school, willing or unwilling."

"To determine if a person can enroll, both Red Lake and Leech Lake use a calculation of blood quantum.  And, as with most Tribes in the United States, that blood quantum has to be from one Tribe alone.   So, to be enrolled at Leech Lake, a person must prove they have the required one-quarter blood quantum from the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe." (121)

Note the following words in the United States Declaration of Independence.  "Among the laundry list of grievances against the king of England was the accusation that he had "endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions." (123)

Theodore Roosevelt: "I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are." (124)  George Washington had called Native people savages who needed to be "extirpated" or destroyed.

Details about the great land grab of the nineteenth century (Louisiana Purchase, westward expansion, homesteading).  "... there was a significant amount of fraud.  Historians estimate that most of the land granted through the Homestead Act went to speculators, cattle ranchers, miners,loggers, and railroads.  Of the more than five hundred million acres dispersed by the General Land Office between 1862 and 1904, only eighty million acres went to homesteaders." (127)

The Dawes Act, like the Homestead Act, alloted "the lands of any reservation anytime it was deemed advantageous for agricultural and grazing purposes."  Plots were 160 acres for Indian heads of household and 80 for single adults.  The land was placed in trust, and people allotted land were given 25 years to demonstrate that they could succeed at Europeanized agricultural practices.  If so, they got the land.  (note the land being allotted was already tribal land).  But much of it wasn't appropriate for farming (soil, rain).  Many natives didn't have the $$ to purchase equipment to farm 160 acres.  The government also levied hefty taxes on the land granted to the Natives after the 25 years was over.  Whites were waiting in line for the land to go into forfeiture to pay taxes. (130-131).  Horror stories on pgs 132-3 re Indian Territory in Oklahoma.

"As with many Cherokee people, Marilyn's relatives included Black Natives and people enslaved by the Cherokee Nation.  It's a common story among the Five Tribes.  All five had a significant history of slavery, one that garered them the name "Five Civilized Tribes" by southern white society.  The thinking being that to own slaves qualified them as civilized."  Sometimes people enslaved by Tribes were part of those Tribes by blood.  Or the slaves spoke Native languages and practiced Native traditions.  "Categories like "Cherokee by blood" and "Freedmen" and "Black Native" were not distinct but, rather, significantly overlapping."...Some estimates are that the Cherokees enslaved more than 2,500 people in 1860; in 1867, in a census conducted of the Nation, there were almost 2,500 Freedmen among the 17,000 total Cherokee people." (134-5)

The Dawes Rolls database was a massive census that includes more then 100,000 people, but they are listed in no particular order.  It attempts to categorize people by "degree of Indian blood" (blood quantum), a principle incorporated into law in 1785 in Virginia.  In 1866 Virginia defined "Indian" as "every person, not a colored person, having one-fourth or more of Indian blood."  (144-5)

The U.S. government only quantifies three things by blood: dogs, horses, and Indians. (174)  There is an official Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood.

The possibility of multiple racial identities is now present in the U. S. Census.  "In 1990, 1.96 million Americans checked the Indian box.  In 2000, when respondents could suddenly check more than one racial category, 4.1 million people checked the Indian box... By 2020, that number had skyrocketed to 9.7 million people." (181)

"Sovereignty, enrollment, membership - these are all manifestation of a political identity, not a racial one." (186)

"I've lost track of the number of times I've been asked "how much" Indian I am, sometimes by complete strangers.  I'm often surprised at the number of people both familiar with the concept of blood quantum and comfortable asking Native people about theirs.  As if that's a perfectly reasonable question to ask someone.  As if it's anyone else's business.  As if there were some mathematical way to quantify an identity that was both meaningful and accurate.   I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a question I'd also asked of myself..."(187)

"It is in January 2023 - while I was writing this book - that I begin to notice an uptick in the number of people who have claimed Native identity who are exposed as liars... many of the claims of fraud feel legitimate, like true instances of people knowingly making false claims to profit somehow... In some ways, Native identity is relatively easy to forge.  Native people have no particular "look," despite what their portrayals on television and film might lead us to believe... (examples given of people tanning skin, dying hair)... My observation, though, is that while stories like these have some shock value, many of them are not so clear-cut... Often, such claimants are relying on stories passed down by family members or genealogy going back centuries.  They may have been told that their great-great-great-grandparent was Cherokee, and so they have internalized this not only as historical truth but as their modern-day reality. (191-2).  I've been told there's a list of "pretendians" floating around on the internet..."

"The problem - whether or not we care to admit it - is that we treat Nativeness differently depending on what a person looks like... In the US we generally accept claims of Native American ancestry by people who present as white.  We believe that it's possible to look white but also be Indian... Yet we do not as willingly give this same benefit of the doubt to people presenting as Black.  It was this way for my grandfather, my cousins, and it's this way for many Lumbee people when they travel outside Robeson County.  Their skin matches the color swatch to which society has assigned the category "Black," and so, therefore, they are Black.  If they claim Native identity, it's seen as hoax, a fanciful tale they've spun out of a desire to accrue privileges of some sort. (209)  

"Partly, I imagine, this is a result of the contradictory ways the United States has dictated Nativeness and Blackness throughout history.  For Native people, the federal project has long been to dilute their Native blood, to assimilate them into the larger society, to root out their Native traditions and force Europeanization (and whiteness) upon them... In the United States, Blackness has long been governed by the idea of "one drop" - that even a single drop of Black blood made a person Black and, thus, stripped them of any privileges or freedoms granted to white people... In the nineteenth century, as slavery became more important to the U.S. economy, the goal was to increase the number of potential slaves.  It was therefore the project of the dominant (white) society to ensure that anyone with Black ancestry could be enslaved.  Hence, anyone with any amount of Black blood would have been considered Black.   White people weren't as much after Native bodies as land... So, instead, the goal was to decrease the number of Native people to eventually make them disappear."  (200-201)

datafags:

testosteronetwunk:

testosteronetwunk:

my favorite celebrity non-controversy was when lorde wanted to express her love of baths so she posted a picture of her bathtub captioned “and iiiiiiiiiii will always love youuuuu” not realizing that whitney houston died in a bathtub

like oh my god. it’s such a non issue but it’s so so funny

this is the type of thing my anxiety thinks is gonna happen every single time I say something