Quick Bites: Makina Cafe at 46-11 Skillman Ave is the only brick-and-mortar Eritrean-Ethiopian restaurant in all of Queens — and it is outstanding. Start with the berbere-spiced prawns, order the Asmara platter for the table, and finish with the kitfo. The injera alone is worth the trip to Sunnyside.
Most New Yorkers who want Eritrean or Ethiopian food head to Brooklyn — Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, the Flatbush corridor. That makes sense: the borough has a deep, established Habesha community and some of the city’s best injera. But Queens has been quietly building its own story, and the anchor of that story is now sitting on Skillman Avenue in Sunnyside.
Makina Cafe opened its first brick-and-mortar location there in late 2025, graduating from a food truck that spent nearly a decade feeding New Yorkers at street fairs, markets, and pop-ups. It is the only restaurant of its kind in the entire borough. And judging by the crowd it is drawing — Sunnyside locals eating there once a week, according to the owner — Queens was ready for it.
What Is Habesha Cuisine? A Quick Primer
Eritrean and Ethiopian cuisines share a common heritage — both are part of what is broadly called Habesha cooking — though the two countries have distinct regional traditions and flavor profiles. The through-line is injera, a spongy, tangy sourdough flatbread made from teff flour that serves as both plate and utensil. Everything arrives on top of or alongside it, and you tear off pieces to scoop up the stews and salads.
The spice backbone is berbere — a complex, warming blend of chili peppers, fenugreek, coriander, cardamom, and half a dozen other spices — and niter kibbeh, a clarified butter infused with aromatics that gives dishes their rich, distinctive depth. Vegetarian and vegan options are abundant, partly because of the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian tradition of fasting days when meat is avoided.
Eritrean cuisine specifically carries traces of its colonial history under Italy — you will find pasta and tomato-based sauces woven into the cooking in ways that feel completely natural rather than grafted on. At Makina, chef-owner Eden Gebre Egziabher calls this Habesha cuisine, a term that honors both Eritrean and Ethiopian roots without collapsing them into one.
Makina Cafe: The Anchor of Queens Habesha Food
46-11 Skillman Avenue, Sunnyside, Queens | Wed–Fri 5–10 PM, Sat–Sun noon–10 PM
Eden Gebre Egziabher launched the Makina food truck in 2017, making it the first Eritrean-Ethiopian truck in New York City. The brick-and-mortar on Skillman Avenue is everything the truck promised and then some: a blush pink dining room with Ethiopian music, a full cocktail list (the orange marmalade gin sour is worth ordering), and a menu that stretches well beyond what any truck could pull off.
Start with the sambusas — the Habesha answer to the samosa, crispy pastry pockets filled with spiced lentils or meat. Then order the Asmara platter, a generous spread of four vegetarian dips and salads served on injera. It is named for the capital of Eritrea and gives you a proper tour of the cuisine: misir wot (red lentils in berbere), gomen (braised greens), shiro (ground split peas with garlic and ginger), and more, all arranged on a sheet of injera so tangy and springy it is worth eating on its own.
For meat eaters, the berbere-spiced prawns are the move — head-on, intensely flavored, and unlike anything else on a typical NYC menu. The doro wot is the classic Ethiopian chicken stew: bone-in chicken simmered in onions caramelized with berbere for hours until both have sweetened and mellowed into something extraordinary. The kitfo — Ethiopian beef tartare enriched with clarified butter and mitmita spice — is rich and funky in the best way.
Makina also does a vegan sampler called awaze tibs that gives you the full breadth of the vegetarian menu. The injera fermentation takes three to five days depending on the weather, and you can taste that care in the result.
What to Order: The Makina Cheat Sheet
Starter: Sambusas and a round of cocktails. The orange marmalade gin sour is the move.
Share: Asmara platter — it is designed for the table and gives you the full picture of the cuisine.
Meat option: Doro wot or kitfo if you want the classics; berbere prawns if you want something unexpected.
Vegan/vegetarian: Awaze tibs sampler covers all the bases.
Price range: Affordable to moderate — this is neighborhood dining, not a special-occasion splurge.
Why Sunnyside for Habesha Food?
Sunnyside is one of Queens’ most diverse and genuinely neighborhood-feeling enclaves — the kind of place where longtime residents still know their bodega owners by name and new restaurants get embraced rather than gentrified into oblivion. It also has excellent transit access: the 7 train gets you there from Midtown in under 20 minutes, and the walk from the Woodside or 52nd Street stops puts you on a stretch of Skillman that feels like a real main street.
There is no Habesha restaurant row here the way there is on Flatbush in Brooklyn or Little Ethiopia in Los Angeles. What Sunnyside has is one very good restaurant making the case that Queens can hold its own. Given how quickly Makina is becoming a neighborhood institution, it probably will not be alone for long.
Getting There
Take the 7 train to 46th Street-Bliss Street or 52nd Street-Lincoln Avenue and walk a few blocks to Skillman. The neighborhood is also accessible by the Q32 and Q60 buses. Street parking is available on surrounding blocks.
For more neighborhood food guides across the boroughs, see our Sunset Park cheap eats guide and our deep dive on Ethiopian food in Brooklyn.
