Some drinks are worth a detour. Spris, a glass of coffee and tea poured into striking two-tone layers, is one of them, and the strange part is you might not have to detour at all. If you're flying to one of our African trips, there's a good chance you'll pass through Addis Ababa on the way. A few hours in the city is all it takes to fall for it.
I first drank Spris at Tomoca, an Ethiopian coffee house in the heart of Addis. But to understand why a simple glass feels like a small ceremony there, you have to start with the country itself, because there is nowhere on Earth where a cup of Ethiopian coffee carries more weight.
The birthplace of coffee
Ethiopia isn't just a place that grows good beans. It is, by most accounts, where coffee began. The story of Ethiopian coffee reaches back more than a thousand years to the highland forests of Kaffa, a region in the southwest that many believe gave the drink its very name.
The legend is famous. A goatherd named Kaldi noticed his goats grew restless and lively after nibbling the red cherries of a wild shrub. Curious, he tried them himself, and eventually the rest of the world followed. Whether or not Kaldi was real, the botanical truth holds: wild Arabica still grows in those Ethiopian forests, and Ethiopian coffee remains the genetic root of nearly every cup poured anywhere on the planet.
That heritage is something Ethiopians carry with quiet pride. Here, coffee isn't a caffeine delivery system. Ethiopian coffee is a birthright.
A goatherd noticed his goats grew restless after nibbling the red cherries of a wild shrub
Coffee as a way of life
Nowhere is that clearer than in the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Green beans are roasted over coals in front of you, ground by hand, and brewed in a clay pot called a jebena, then served in three successive rounds. The whole ritual can stretch across two or three hours, because the point was never the drink alone. It's the sitting, the talking, the being together. An Ethiopian coffee ceremony is a conversation with a cup in your hand.
Modern Addis Ababa runs on the same fuel, only faster. The city is dense with cafés, from old-world rooms with goatskin stools to slick espresso bars, and Ethiopian coffee culture spills out of every one of them. To order Ethiopian coffee in its home city is to take part in something communal, something old, and something the whole world quietly borrowed.
Tomoca: Ethiopian coffee at its source
Which brings us back to Tomoca. Founded in 1953, it's the oldest coffee roaster in Addis Ababa, and its name is a piece of history in itself: a contraction of the Italian Torrefazione Moderna Café, "modern coffee roasting," a nod to Ethiopia's brief Italian chapter.
It's a no-frills place: a small, aromatic room, a mural of a roaring lion, standing only, and a queue of locals who know exactly what they want. The beans come straight from Kaffa, roasted on site, and the Ethiopian coffee served here is both cheap and outstanding. Most people come for the macchiato and buy beans to take home; but if you ask, they'll pour you a Spris. It's the perfect place to taste Ethiopian coffee where the whole tradition began.
A few hours in Addis: the stopover trick
Here's the part worth planning around. Many of our routes into Africa connect through Addis Ababa, and the airlines that hub here make it easy to break the journey for a day at no extra cost to your ticket. (We wrote a whole guide to airlines with free stopover programs: worth a read before you book.)
A few hours is genuinely enough to taste the city. Start at the National Museum, home to Lucy, the 3.2-million-year-old ancestor who reminds you this is one of humanity's oldest crossroads. Wander the Piazza, throw yourself into the sensory overload of Mercato, one of the largest open-air markets in Africa, and climb toward Entoto for a view over the whole capital. Then do the one thing that really matters: sit down for an Ethiopian coffee. In Addis, that isn't a break from sightseeing. It is the sightseeing.
Recipe informations
5 minutee
10 minutes (brewing the coffee and tea)
1 glass
Drink / Beverage
Ethiopia
You'll need (per glass):
- Strong brewed Ethiopian coffee (about ½ cup): use Ethiopian beans if you can find them; that's the whole point
- Strong black tea (about ½ cup), freshly brewed
- Sugar, to taste
- A clear glass, so the layers show
Instruction
- Brew your Ethiopian coffee strong: a moka pot or a dark, concentrated filter both work well. Let it cool for a minute.
- Brew the black tea strong too, and stir sugar into it while it's hot. The sweeter, denser liquid settles on the bottom, so sweeten the tea a little more heavily than you think.
- Pour the tea into the glass first.
- Slowly pour the Ethiopian coffee over the back of a spoon held just above the surface: this lets it settle gently on top instead of mixing, giving you the signature two-tone layers.
- Serve as is, and let each drinker stir or sip through the layers however they like.
Don't chase perfection: in Addis, plenty of glasses get stirred together anyway. The layering is theatre; the real pleasure is in the pairing of good tea with the depth of proper Ethiopian coffee.
You can make a decent Spris in your own kitchen. But the version that stays with you is the one drunk standing up in a loud, coffee-scented room in Addis Ababa, on your way to somewhere wild, the taste of Ethiopian coffee still on your tongue. So the next time a route through Ethiopia offers you a stopover, take it. A few hours, one glass, and the birthplace of Ethiopian coffee will have made its case.