The Ethiopian dishes at the pop-up restaurant Waliimo arrived with their traditional edible utensils. That’s the injera, a stretchy, pleasingly sour, crêpe-like flatbread, and soon we were tearing off pieces to bundle around lamb tangled with caramelized onion.
This is a captivating way to eat. But I also took time to look up from the plate and watch the scene around the dining room and open kitchen in motion.
That revealed an inside view on a budding piece of the city’s culinary culture, part of a growing local institution adding a needed foundational layer to the city’s identity as a hospitality town.
This was at the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute, the culinary school in downtown New Orleans that, of course, we call NOCHI. Each semester, students enrolled in this fast-track training program work together to conceive, produce and then run their own on-campus restaurant, which is open to the public for lunch.
The latest edition right now is call Waliimo, serving dishes from Ethiopia and other East African traditions.
It’s part of a program aimed at giving an accessible, affordable jump-start in the hospitality field right here in New Orleans, and it’s building a pipeline for more experienced, qualified people for businesses that sit at the juncture of the city’s economy and culture. It’s giving a city with many great restaurants a place for structured, professional training for the people those restaurants need.
The restaurant gives the public a glimpse into this work, and a great lunch too, especially if you gather a few friends or coworkers for the outing.
The best way to eat at Waliimo is communal style. Get the big platters combining dishes to sample, using that injera bread all the way through. You can get cocktails too, even though this is a culinary school, because it is New Orleans and there is lunch service on Friday. I’m just saying
Lunch dates for the NOCHI pop-up run through June 13.
