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Meseret Defar of Ethiopa signs autographs after breaking the 5,000-meter world record by .13 seconds.
Lights-out performance
Defar the toast of the town after setting 5,000 record
NEW YORK -- On the wall of the Queen of Sheba Ethiopian restaurant in New York's Hell's Kitchen stands a mural depicting the Queen's visit to King Solomon centuries ago. The queen, known as Mekeda, arrived in Jerusalem bearing gifts of previously unknown spice from the mysterious foreign land. Below the mural late Saturday night, Ethiopia's modern queen was being feted for making her own history and bringing her own spice to New York.
Meseret Defar's historic run at Icahn Stadium on Randall's Island hours earlier established a world record for 5,000 meters. With a blistering 61-second final lap, the defending Olympic champion finished in 14 minutes, 24.53 seconds, breaking the mark set by Turkey's Elvan Abeylegesse (born Ethiopian and changed her nationality to Turkish recently) two years ago by a scant .13 seconds. Defar's feat made her the first runner to break a world record in a certified distance event (1,500 meters to 10,000 meters) on U.S. soil since Henry Rono broke the mark in the 3,000-meter steeplechase in Seattle in 1978. Defar, 22, wasn't even alive.
Conversation loosened as the hours passed and the women began teasing one another for having slow kicks and flawed running form. Defar sipped only once during a champagne toast in her honor and then stood up to join in an impromptu eskista, a gyrating shoulder dance for which good form is surely beside the point. As several male teammates began clapping and getting into the rhythms of Amharic pop tunes, another woman began waving an Ethiopian flag behind the revelers as men from the bar clapped a chorus and feted the young legend before them.
Defar probably needed to negative-split her celebrations. After a weekend of training and sleeping, Defar and her team planned to loosen the discipline to enjoy a New York excursion. "We are going shopping," she said. "I will buy anything I might like."
That's heady progress for the girl who began running in shoes her older brother would outgrow and discard because her family in Addis was too scrapped for money. "Fifty people in this restaurant will remember what she did here and remember this night forever," Philipos Mengistu, the restaurant's owner and chef, said in the wee hours of Sunday morning. "It's a small world, but now the world is hers."
Sports Illustrated
June, 2006 |
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Queen of Sheba
Taste of Town
March 2005
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QUEEN OF SHEBA –- The Ethiopian restaurant Queen of Sheba offers unique, exotic meals in a relaxed setting. Delicious vegetarian, chicken, lamb, beef, fish are available at bargain prices. A great New York find! 650 Tenth Ave. (btw. 45-46 Sts.), 212-397-0610.
Restaurant Critic & Columnist
Richard J. Scholem
March, 2005 |
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Scarlet Fingers
"Ethiopian immigrants must be among the nation's canniest restaurateurs. Though numbering only 33,000 nationwide, they've assembled an impressive collection of restaurants in major American cities: Washington boasts 17, Seattle 11, and New York 12, plus a pair of Eritrean joints. Many share an assortment of predictable names like Blue Nile, Red Sea, Queen of Sheba, and Meskerem (the joyous first month of the Coptic Christian calendar), though none seems part of a chain. Sadly, they also mount nearly identical menus of brick-colored meat stews and hard-to-differentiate pulse purees. Between the intriguing and sometimes fiery spice combinations and the chance to eat with your fingers without your parents lurking around to scold you, most of these places are pretty appealing anyway. But Ethiopian cooking is much broader.
New York finally has its own Queen of Sheba, recently opened in Hell's Kitchen..."
Robert Sietsema
The Village Voice
May 10th, 2001 |
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At Long Last, New Yorkers' Appetites Are Ready for Ethiopia
"The brick and ocher walls glowed softly in the low lights, the place was packed with a good-looking crowd, and the chef was making the rounds, kissing familiar faces and asking if everybody was happy. But nobody at this new restaurant was praising the foie gras or the tuna steak. Here at Queen of Sheba, which opened just a week ago in Clinton, the crowd had turned out for fine Ethiopian fare: beef and lamb stews flavored with a rousing dark-red hot sauce, and wonderful vegetarian dishes seasoned with complex spice blends, all eaten not with forks but with pieces of injera, a spongy flat bread with the enticing flavor of sourdough..."
Eric Asimov
The New York Times
February 28, 2001 |
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Taste of the Month
"WHAT'S THE MOST EXOTIC TABLE where editors have sat down recently? The mesob (traditional basketwork table) at Queen of Sheba. We went totally native at this Ethiopian storefront, breaking off shreds of injera, a spongybuck wheat bread, and scooping up delicacies like azifa (green lentils onions and chili peppers). Tibs wot was an adventure; think morsels of beef spiced to the nth degree with peppery berbere sauce. We also tried kitfo Ethiopian steak tartar and doro wot, a zesty stew containing chicken legs and whole hard boiled-eggs. Aromatic cinnamon-infused tea carried us through the meal. If you need help in ordering, ask owner and chef Philipos Mengistu who is as gracious a host and as adept a cook as your are likely to find along the length and breadth of Tenth Avenue. "
Francis Lewis
Where Magazine
www.whereny.com
Aug 2002
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GOOD EATING; Out of Africa
" February, which is Black History Month, is a good time to explore the exotic foods at these often overlooked African restaurants...
QUEEN OF SHEBA
(212)397-0610; 650 10th Avenue (46th Street); $; Article: 2/28/01.
With its brick and ocher walls and good-looking crowd, Queen of Sheba is one of the more inviting Ethiopian restaurants in New York. And the food is pretty good, too: beef and lamb stews flavored with a rousing dark-red hot sauce, and wonderful vegetarian dishes seasoned with complex spice blends...." eating@nytimes.com
The New York Times
February 16, 2003
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images/Sheba _5.jpg
Citysearch.com's Review
Gracious service and a cozy room
make for an easy intro to exotic Ethiopian fare.
Queen of Sheba Restaurant
feautred on ABC TV - Channel 7 - New York 
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