Lula Tilahun
Director of Entertainment & Sports, Loews Hollywood · Author
She carried her grandmother's kitchen out of Addis Ababa and set it down, generously, on the world's table.
From Addis Ababa to Hollywood
Lula was born in Addis Ababa and moved to the United States with her family at twelve. The recipes came with her — not written down, but held: learned at the elbows of her grandmother, her mother and her aunts, in kitchens where flavour was built slowly and food was never only food.
Then came the career. Hospitality is not a gentle industry; it asks for your evenings, your weekends, your holidays. Lula rose through it anyway, across some of the most storied hotels in the country, and today serves as Director of Entertainment & Sports at Loews Hollywood — the person entrusted with the guests the world watches.
But the long hours made the long recipes impossible. Ethiopian cooking asks for time. Lula had none. So instead of letting the tradition go quiet, she spent years rebuilding it — testing, shortening, adapting, refusing to lose a single note of flavour in the process. What she was really doing was making sure the food of her childhood could survive a modern life.
Enebla
Recipes from an Ethiopian Kitchen · TouchWood Editions
“Enebla” means let's eat in Amharic. It is an invitation — and that is exactly what this book is.
Her debut collection gathers more than sixty-five recipes, vivid photography and family anecdotes into the warmest possible introduction to Ethiopian cuisine: injera, wot stews, spice blends built from scratch, and the dishes a family actually eats. It is accessible without being diluted, authentic without being intimidating — a rare and generous piece of work.
“A staple in Ethiopian cuisine.”
— Essence Magazine
Get EneblaWe met at the Loews Regency San Francisco — an Ethiopian woman and a German woman, both far from where we started, both building something no one had asked us to build. Lula was one of the first people to believe in Nina Moon before it had a name, before there was a single page to show her.
She is one of the most genuinely warm, gifted and inspiring women I have ever had the privilege of knowing. Her cookbook is a love letter to Ethiopian culture and cuisine — and to every woman who was told there was no time to keep the beautiful things alive, and made time anyway.
This is what women do for each other when no one is watching.
— Nina Moon