Chef Ali Lemma knows what it’s like to pivot and bet on yourself. It’s exactly why Ruki’s Kitchen, a pop-up turned food stall, has made waves in Atlanta’s local food scene. Known for its Ethiopian fare that turns the traditional communal dining experience into a modern fast-casual take on the beloved cuisine, Lemma’s vision is steadfast.
Spicy lentil soup seasoned with berbere, warm injera rolls, and cuts of meat cooked with aromatic seasoning blends are plated on food trays, creating a colorful table of dishes. A silhouette of a faceless Ethiopian woman, inspired by the women in his family, greets customers as the logo, and the name Ruki’s Kitchen pays homage to his mother, Rukia. A hat that sits on a surface in the kitchen — lit by natural light that warms the whole space — sums it all up: “Habesha Bred, ATL fed.”
Raised in both Ethiopia and DeKalb County, Lemma has created a space that serves as a love letter to both.
“As I got older and especially getting into this space, I was just like, I need to be this voice for our community and bridge this gap of who we are. A lot of people know where Ethiopia is, and people have an idea of what we do, but this is also a space to just express that.”
Lemma celebrated the grand opening of Ruki’s Kitchen in Terminal South’s Switchman Hall in January 2026, but the journey for the banker-turned-chef began in early 2022 after he decided to leave his lucrative banking job in Atlanta. He’d realized he wasn’t happy with where he was in life, so to regroup, Lemma moved back in with his mom and decided to use his newfound free time to travel. But what was supposed to be a six-week backpacking trip in Guatemala ended up lasting only one week. Lemma didn’t feel like himself and called it “the lowest point in his life.”
“It was four or five months into this departure from my job, and then my mom just kind of looked at me. She was like, ‘All right, you tried to travel. You tried to take some time off. You’ve got to do something.’ So, I was like, I have this idea. Let me try to start this restaurant.”
Photo by Tabius McCoy/The Atlanta Voice
But it took another venture into the corporate route before Lemma was finally committed. When he began his first day at his new job, he immediately knew that it wasn’t where his journey was leading him. He closed his laptop and decided then and there that he wanted to give the idea of a restaurant everything he had. From that moment on, the concept of Ruki’s Kitchen began to flourish.
Lemma went from helping small, minority-owned businesses bridge the funding gap in his banking roles to beginning the process of opening his own. He found a pop-up community kitchen in East Atlanta that allowed chefs to try out their concepts, and after the owner took a chance on him with a trial run, Lemma began the work to make his dreams a reality. With no prior restaurant cooking experience and his first pop-up in a month, Lemma said he scoured almost every Ethiopian restaurant in the city before he found a mom-and-pop that welcomed his efforts to learn Ethiopian cooking and the skills and techniques behind it.
He spent five to eight hours a day, unpaid, learning everything he needed to run his own businesses. Sheets of paper became filled with ideas, from design and branding to operations and curation of the menu.
“Two or three days before the first pop-up was when I told the lady at the Ethiopian restaurant, ‘I really appreciate you. I will forever remember you. Thank you for taking me under your wing. It’s time for me to fly. I had my first pop-up, and I killed it.”
Lemma hosted a pop-up at the community kitchen every Friday for a month, and each one got bigger and bigger. He went from a one-month trial to a six-month lease. “We ran through the six months. The brand just continued to thrive. And she was just like, ‘I want you on a year-to-year lease.”
The foundation was being built. Lemma spent two years at the community kitchen, building his following and a loyal customer base. But his rise soon came to a halt when Lemma was unexpectedly evicted from the kitchen after a dispute with the owner. He went from opening Ruki’s Kitchen on Wednesday to having to move everything out the same Wednesday night. He spoke out about the situation on social media, where it gained traction, leading to news outlets contacting him and nearly 50 other vendors reaching out to express that the same thing had happened to them.
Lemma soon realized his power as a leader and as a business owner. He now calls it “one of the best things that’s ever happened to me.” Other business owners began reaching out, inviting him to their restaurant to set up shop. And so began his series of residencies and organized pop-ups, making space for Ethiopian cuisine in unlikely places. His pop-ups became known for their lively nature, bringing in a young crowd filled with music, dance, and clear support for other Black-owned businesses.
“I feel like one thing that especially Ethiopians have more than anything is a sense of pride due to the fact that it’s been a country that’s never been touched or colonized before. I’m not saying this in a very bad way at all, but when a community has something that is so pure, you don’t want to modify it,” Lemma said. “When I created this space, I was like, OK, every Ethiopian restaurant is the same. They’re all very good, but they all feel just very traditional and old. We have a beautiful culture, and I’m not knocking it by any means, but I thought, where do the younger people go? Where’s a place that has more of a fresh look and a fresh touch?”
Ruki’s Kitchen became that place. The menu features four offerings of tibs, a traditional dish featuring stir-fried meat cooked with onions, garlic, peppers, and Ethiopian spice blends. Known for its vegan dishes, the menu also features a variety of vegetables, such as stewed collard greens and cabbage, that you can either order as sides or a platter of its own. It’s all scooped up with injera, a sour fermented flatbread that merges all the flavors together. Guests can sit at the bar or at the booths that line the front of the restaurant.
“Every Ethiopian restaurant is sit-down, take your time, all that, and it’s very intimidating. With most African or ethnic restaurants, you’re just like, what is all this stuff? When I created this brand in this kitchen, my whole vision was to create a very simple menu that kind of captures most of what our food is. It’s very straightforward.”
Lemma’s focus wasn’t on creating a fusion-style restaurant. He wanted it to fully represent Ethiopian cuisine. However, he began to feature one dish that became a favorite at his pop-ups: Habesha “lemon pepper wet” wings. He recognized that it disrupted his vision of being a traditional restaurant; he’d worked hard to perfect his recipes and knew Atlanta was the wing capital. But he also recognized that the wings could serve as a gateway to the Ethiopian dishes on the menu.
“For people who don’t know Ethiopian food and just want wings, it’s a way to just familiarize them with the flavors and then bring them in. It’s bait. The reason I don’t offer a side like fries is because I want to force people to try our sides.
“After some time of me getting comfortable with it, I kind of thought to myself, you know what? This is actually the dish on my menu that represents me the most. I’m Ethiopian, but I’m Atlanta. Like, this is Atlanta’s national dish with Ethiopian flavors.”
Ruki’s Kitchen is the example of what it looks like when heritage, culture, and love meet. For Lemma, his focus is on continuing to create good food and intimate, creative experiences for himself and the community.
“I never had this dream to create a restaurant or bridge my cultures, and a lot of it came as I started to think about it. But I’m really starting to see now, this is probably my calling. This is what I was meant to do. Because now, I feel strong about doing that. I feel strong about representing my culture and bringing my roots to my home.”
Ruki’s Kitchen is open at 1161 Ridge Ave SW from noon to 8 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday.
