Once while having coffee with friends, a woman and man, at a Tele Bar located near Gambia Street, the topic switched to a cheering natter involving meat eateries.

The man started to chatter about how, week in and week out, he goes to a livestock market to pick a sheep. He never allows his guard down in the culling, skinning, eviscerating and cutting. He almost wholly consumes it alone as well.

The woman went on about how she was amazed by the sight of a fattened ox accompanied by six or more people, like a bride, ceremoniously led to slaughter. She recounted in awe how she accompanied them in her vehicle for a long while, stopping when the ox got tired and how it hardly moved without assistance.

As the thought of meat watered their mouths, they brought up the idea of eating tire siga, a raw meat delicacy. We went to Abuare, in the direction of Balderas, and turned right into a green gated compound. Only vehicles looked welcome, and no other food was served besidetire siga.

No one orders in kilos. It is just lunch that we order. For 50 Br a pile of ribs, six individual portions. Though not fit as my friends, I joined the fight. As we were devouring and washing our throats with a sparkling yellow tej, honey wine, the woman started to complain that the meat was from a fattened, and then to its end, a bit underfed ox.

The man for his part said the one they - the two - had together a month or so ago, at Dukem, was the best. They had gone there only for the sake of eating meat. The woman then started to discuss how out of this world the meat she had at a wedding some months back was. I said, for my part, I have never seen anything like the meat we have just had. They looked at me with surprise.

There is a ritual to feasts, indeed to the traditional way of eating raw meat delicacies. A man who calls his kin to a feast does not do so to save them from starving. They all have food in their own homes. When we gather together in the moonlit village ground, it is not because of the moon. Everyone can see it in their compound. We come together because it is good for kin to do so, Chinua Achebe, the famed Nigerian novelist, once said.

It sums up the spirit of a tire sigafeast around a table in Ethiopia among friends and family.

Yidnekachew Tessema - a built to last national icon, plateful in every tier of responsibility the game names, one of the most travelled people one can imagine - said that his favourite “dish” was raw meat, though in the old days he was fond of doro wator spiced chicken. The cocktail circuit was certainly not for the tough kid from Arada, as he told Gedamu Abrha, in his 1969 colourful interview.

Tired of the raw chuck steak myself, I used to eat dishes made of tenderloin at an Italian restaurant close to my office.