Wick Wood is a small patch of forest, some 25 minutes from Canterbury West station by car. On a mid-spring day, the route is serene with chocolate box charm – undulating hills, cerulean sky, bulging hedgerows – despite my taxi driver’s evident stress. He can’t find Wick Wood and his sat nav is proving useless.
Suddenly, from the road, a curl of rising smoke becomes visible – a clue that this might be the place I’m looking for. We turn into a field and there, before us, is a little woodland containing the faint voices of children playing – and from which smoke rises.
Inside the wood – and it really does feel ‘inside’, with a ceiling of canopy, a carpet of bluebells and several fires on which heavy cast iron pots sit bubbling – is a group of people busying themselves with the business of lunch. I have come to meet Helina Tesega and Scott Albon, a couple based not far away in Margate. It is there that they are about to open Eat Ethio, a gallery-café-studio hybrid space anchored in Ethiopian food, as its name suggests, but which also encompasses the ingredients, artisans and culture of Helina’s home country, events such as coffee ceremonies and herbal workshops, and Scott’s graphic design practice.
Today, Helina is cooking an Ethiopian lunch using mostly Kentish produce, some of it sourced from Wick Wood itself, like nettles which she adds to gomen (a wilted greens dish), and the three-cornered leeks that are everywhere – always the most welcome weed, in my mind, arresting our noses with its damp pungency each spring. They have assembled a group of like-minded friends including Laure Thompson, a Waldorf Steiner teacher, Emma Loder-Symonds, a regenerative farmer and educator – and the owner of this woodland – plus her two children, as well as Helina and Scott’s own eight year-old son, Brukie.
While the kids play – for hours, I should add, on a tyre swing suspended from an ancient tree and with the trolley on which Scott packed the kerosene stoves and produce – the rest muck in: Laure strips cavolo nero leaves from its ribs, Scott chops tomatoes destined for a salad (to be dressed with shallots, lime juice, flax oil and lurid orange calendula petals) and Emma offers round almond croissants to keep the wolf from the door – made with flour from her farm. Intermittently, they check on a leg of lamb that bathes in wot (a slow-cooked sauce of onions, berbere spice, garlic and ginger and the base of much Ethiopian cooking), simmering on a stove. Together, the group makes a meal in a well-oiled system – work, play, and learning, community and pleasure, all realised as one. It is this oneness which, I sense, Eat Ethio will harness, holding several aspects of Ethiopian culture, and every aspect of Helina, Scott and Brukie’s lives, under one roof. It will also be a versatile community space for whoever passes through its doors.
Having met in Shanghai over 10 years ago, the couple then moved to Hong Kong and ran Ethiopian supper clubs for an international community that delighted in the bright, bold flavours Helina brought to the table. Hoping to open a permanent restaurant site, they moved to London next. But life had other plans. Brukie turned up shortly after the move, then the pandemic arrived, and suddenly they were looking at a very different version of events in the UK.
“Eight years on and we are finally opening the place we’d imagined,” says Helina. Rather than doing so in London, they find themselves in Margate, which has all the ingredients Eat Ethio needs: artistic sensibilities, an established food culture, and rents that, says Scott, “enable people to try things without ruining them if they don’t work.”
“Things have unfolded intuitively,” Helina goes on, “I didn’t know what kind of mother I was going to be, but it has felt right to give Brucke a childhood that’s close to nature and, so far, an education that’s a bit alternative.” It is through the latter that the pair met Emma, who runs outdoor education for children at her farm, Nonington. No one in this group has necessarily chosen the easiest way to live – cooking and farming and teaching and home educating all make for graft – but there is a distinct sense of them all seeing a bigger picture, and of wanting to work in a way that’s attuned to nature.
Since the move to Kent, Helina has started studying herbalism to understand the therapeutic use of plants. This, she says, has always been second nature to her mother, who is not only a skilled cook, but Helina realises now, has always added ingredients for a reason, nutrition and medicine going hand-in-hand. The calendula petals on the tomatoes, for example, are known for being “an ally to the digestive system,” as is the dandelion vinegar with which Helina dresses them, helping the body to process the rich, intensely flavoured lamb.
Studying is arming Helina with the ability to integrate British plants into her repertoire, her favourite being hawthorn, “a marker of Spring,” she says. “I see it everywhere in hedges across the UK and it is known for being a heart tonic.” Hawthorn sits at the centre of the table – “to hold the heart of the occasion and bring connection,” says Helina – which has been set up beside the kerosene stoves and is laden with Helina’s herbs and tinctures, among them a jar of antioxidant-rich moringa, kibe (clarified butter), and her mum’s aromatic berbere spice blend (of fenugreek, ginger and Berbere chilli pepper, among other things), which adds earthy punch to all manner of Ethiopian dishes.
Coffee, too, has medicinal properties, and for this reason, says Scott, they will only be serving it black at Eat Ethio, alongside herbal drinks and snacks such as brownies made with teff flour, an ancient and staple Ethiopian grain. “As much as I love a flat white, there’s no shortage of them in Margate,” he laughs, “and we want people to enjoy it as they would in Ethiopia – black, in small cups – so you can taste it in its purest form.” We sip the coffee, which is zesty and chocolatey, while Helina brings together the last bits of lunch, stirring the kibe and wild garlic leaves into a pan of cracked oats for a wholesome side dish known as kinche. The nettles and cavolo nero sit alongside Helina’s take on ergo, a cooling yoghurt sauce with foraged alexanders, lemon balm, garlic and Ethiopian cardamom. With the lamb wot (stew), tomatoes and injera – a sour fermented pancake made with teff, used to hold and scoop up food – an edible vessel and utensil in one.
Another stressed cab driver arrives in the adjacent field, having just found Wick Wood after a long search. There is one train an hour back to London from Canterbury West and so I have to leave early – but not before Helina packs me a picnic. I have never had train food like it – laced with wild garlic and alexanders, moringa and berbere spice – an Ethiopian spread made with southern English produce, much of it foraged. Delicious Kentish treasures can be found if you look. My tip is to follow the smoke signal.
Helina wears the Bolster Stripe Linen Shift Dress and Culottes. Scott wears the Cotton Linen Pull Over Shirt and Bill Cotton Canvas Wide Leg Trousers. The Hand Woven Siesta Check Napkin, Poterie Barbotine Twisted Pitcher, Contrast Rim Enamel Salad Bowl, Speckle Enamel Platter, Contrast Rim Enamel Dinner Plate, Matt Grimmitt Slipware Bowl, Moroccan Glass Carafe and Glasses Set also feature.
Words by Mina Holland.
Photography by Elena Heatherwick.
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