April 4, 2019

An Ethiopian restaurant that was closed for nine months after the building it was leasing was sold has reopened.

Fasika Ethiopian Restaurant is on the north end of a retail center at 12th Street and Garfield Avenue. For 12 years, it had been on the southwest corner of Sixth Street and West Avenue, where the new Hibir Ethiopian Restaurant is located.

Along with the move, owners Ojulu Oballa and his wife, Alamz Tsege, have added a business partner.

Fasika, which means Easter, serves traditional Ethiopian dishes with beef, lamb and chicken, Oballa said.

Tsege and an employee do all of the cooking, preparing each dish as it’s ordered, Oballa said.

The restaurant has an alcohol license and includes Ethiopian beer and wine in its offerings.

Ethiopian coffee is also a part of the menu, and “sometimes on the weekend, we do a coffee ceremony,” he said. The practice includes roasting the beans, grinding them and then brewing the grounds in a pot of boiling water. The coffee is served in small cups without handles.

Oballa has been in the United States for 27 years after fleeing from Ethiopia to the Sudan and requesting political asylum. He settled in Washington, D.C., where he met and married Tsege, who was visiting the nation’s capital. They moved to Sioux Falls 20 years ago.

Their restaurant is open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Closing time is later, “sometimes as late as 1 a.m.” Friday through Sunday, Oballa said.

Sioux Falls has one other longtime Ethiopian restaurant, Lalibela, and a fourth one, Hagere, plans to open Saturday.