Welcome

Tsion Café-Ethiopian Yellow Pages

Tsion Café – Ethiopian Yellow Pages interior You may think you’re entering a cafe, but what’s hidden behind the doors of Tsion Cafe is a food and culture experience like no other in Sugar Hill. Once home to the famous Jimmy’s Chicken Shack club, Tsion Cafe has morphed delicious Ethiopian and Mediterranean inspired cuisines, International wine & beers, to fair trade Ethiopian coffees and teas, into a memorable speakeasy experience.

“A Sugar Hill experience that embodies art, music, and history with every bite. Tsion Cafe is a food centric artistic hub for many residents and one of the best kept destination spots for visitors.

Tsion Cafe interior. Come visit us and enjoy one of our many Ethiopian and Mediterranean food experiences each night of the week that includes: South African wine tastings, live music, art previews, film screenings and more.

We look forward to welcoming you soon.

Love,

Beejhy and Padmore

Check Out Our Menu

Tsion Café’s menu is influenced by the worldly travels of owner Beejhy Barhany. Our Ethiopian dishes, featuring Beejhy’s mom favorite spices and mixes, along lovely dishes and salads that speak so flavorfully of their Mediterranean beginnings and a selection of tasteful wines from her travels through South America. Come taste our menu to be transported across the world.

The Harlem restaurant is at its most interesting when different cultures that the owner has experienced—Ethiopian, Middle Eastern—come together in her excellent dishes.

History percolates just about everywhere in Harlem. At 148th and St. Nicholas, there’s a long basement that used to be home to Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, a joint frequented by jazz musicians, where Charlie Parker and Malcolm X once worked. These days, the hen-shaped sign that hung above the door is gone, replaced by an image of a smiling angel, more suitable for a place that’s now named for the center of a holy land: Tsion Café.Beejhy Barhany, Tsion’s co-owner, can usually be found behind the counter of this Sugar Hill restaurant. Her smile belies her journey. When she was a child, she and her family, who are part of a deep-rooted community of Ethiopian Jews called Beta Israelis, left East Africa on foot to get to Israel. When they arrived, they faced discrimination because they were black. Almost twenty years ago, Barhany decided to move to America, because she appreciated its diversity, and in 2014 she opened Tsion, transforming the Chicken Shack into a beautiful art-filled nook lined with blue banquettes which leads to a sunny back yard.