Photo by Lexi Coon
Coffee is an important part of Ethiopian culture and is something both Gini and Kedija Mohammed have brought to their restaurant. They often hold a traditional coffee ceremony, during which they roast harrar coffee beans, grind them and boil them before serving. The harrar coffee bean has a distinct flavor, one that is less bitter than traditional coffees. Left, the beans are roasted in a small pan before being ground.
William Perez says his business — a little taco truck on the corner of Green Springs Highway and Oxmoor Road — is simple.
“I cook what I love to cook,” he says.
But making the dream happen wasn’t quite as simple, said Perez, who started Los Valedores Taco Truck a few years back while he was working as a chef for Culinard.
“I moved here from a town a couple of hours out from Mexico City when I was 17,” he said. “My first job was at Chick-Fil-A, and I worked about 18 years with Culinard.”
But his desire was always to make the food from his hometown — tasty dishes like tlacoyos, an oval-shaped dish made of a Mexican bread called masa and stuffed with ground beans and cheese. He also wanted to make tacos, burritos, flautas and gorditas the authentic way, the way he grew up helping his mama make.
So Perez would get up every morning, work his early shift at Culinard and then come over to work at Los Valedores until close. Over time, business got good enough he could quit Culinard and focus on the taco truck full time.
The truck was an ideal way to start, he said. “You can park it somewhere, then if business isn’t good, you can easily try another place.”
But he quickly found that business just off of Green Springs is good. “There’s lots of traffic here on this road,” Perez said.
Restaurateurs tucked into trucks, strip malls and shopping centers in the few blocks on either side of Los Valedores seem to agree. That section of Green Springs is home to dozens of international restaurants: several taco trucks, Asian markets, Korean BBQ, Lebanese food and a number of others.
In Gini Mohammed’s restaurant, Red Sea Ethiopian and Mediterranean, you can even get two types of international food all in one place.
She and her sister, Kedija, are from Ethiopia, and they love to cook food from their home country the way it is supposed to taste, Mohammed said. But Kedija also spent time in Saudi Arabia and loves cooking Mediterranean food, too — that’s where the “Red Sea” part comes in.
“Our food is authentic,” Mohammed said. “The spice and everything comes from Ethiopia. We want it to be exactly like it is back home.”
They picked their location in a shopping center on Green Springs because it is “close to UAB and downtown and everything, really,” she said. “It’s a very diverse area — a lot of people and a lot of different kinds of food. And a lot of people in the areas around us — Homewood, Hoover and Vestavia — really like different kinds of cultural food.”
They make fresh Ethiopian bread every morning, and they do the coffee ceremonies their country is known for, Mohammed said.
They’ve only been open about a year, but they love where they are, she said. Red Sea got started at the “right place and right time.”
“We are blessed,” she said. “It’s a great place to be.”
