Popular SLO Ethiopian restaurant is searching for another spot. Where will it go?

The only Ethiopian restaurant in San Luis Obispo County is searching for another spot to house its popular dishes.

Ebony has been in its space in the Network Mall at 778 Higuera St. for a little over a year.

While its current lease is not up until December, its four owners said they are putting out feelers for another place after their landlord did not provide information if they could renew their lease as of July 10.

“At some point I was like, maybe it’s just a good idea to assume that we’re leaving, because if your lease is not renewed, it’s safe to assume you’re leaving,” co-owner Feben Teffera told The Tribune. “That’s when we decided let’s just start the search and we don’t want to be stuck at the last minute.”

The restaurant made an announcement on its Instagram page, asking for recommendations of open spots to fit Ebony.

“We have less than six months to sort everything out ... so until we hear otherwise, we’re gonna assume this place is not ours past December,” Teffera said.

Teffera owns Ebony alongside her aunts Helen Abraha and Martha Taezaz. The Ethiopian restaurant started out in The Kitchen Terminal as a takeout place in 2021, and moved to downtown SLO after two years.

“Everybody from The Kitchen Terminal followed us here,” Teffera said. “Because we’re centrally located, we catch a lot of people who didn’t mean to come here, but they end up loving it.”

Ebony has been a community gathering space since they opened downtown, Teffera said, just as she envisioned when she started the restaurant. A bowl she offers to customers has fruits from friends’ gardens, and even if they are not ordering food, they can sit and relax in the restaurant’s back patio.

“It just feels like people come here because they feel like it’s their ‘third place,’” she said. “The third place concept, it’s not your house, it just feels like this is their second home, and people feel very relaxed — like sometimes you see people sitting in a place they’re not even supposed to sit. It just feels like there’s no rules in a good way.”

While the restaurant’s future in its downtown spot is in limbo, Tefferan told The Tribune she would love to remain in the spot, even just for a short period of time.

“Maybe this is totally wishful thinking, but maybe they’ll give us a six month lease because all we want to do is stay here for at least a year or two so we can feel like we’re established, and then we can move if we have to,” she said. “But it just felt like it was so quick, and like we just got here.”

For right now, the owners at Ebony are still on the hunt for a new place to move while serving classic Ethiopian dishes like misir wot, or red lentil stew, injera, a spongy flatbread and shiro wot, a chickpea stew.

“We actually love being here,” Teffera said. “It’s never like going to work. We’re having such a genuine happy time, or even when we’re working it always feels like there’s always something fun because you’re feeding people.”

For more information

Ebony at 778 Higuera St. is open Monday and Tuesday from 5 to 8 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

For more information about the Ethiopian restaurant, visit its website at ebony-slo.com or call 805-439-1337.

This story was originally published July 17, 2025 at 5:00 AM.