I hope you’ve spent time with Yalem, either at The Prime Smokehouse or at NABS Deli and Coffee Shop. She has now released a new cookbook.
Part of Yalem’s worldview is that we are all tied to something larger. Her culinary journey, from Ethiopia to everywhere life has taken her, has taught her that no matter where we come from, we meet one another around food. It’s our common language.
I’ve cooked from many well-loved cookbooks over the years, some with notes scribbled in the margins, dates marking Christmas dinners or family birthdays, and pages stained from drips that happened along the way.
But Yalem’s new cookbook stands apart from the rest. The design. The photographs. The writing. And the recipes themselves, each beautifully presented. My snapshots don’t do its pages justice, but they offer a glimpse of the care and creativity behind this gem.
Part of Yalem’s story unfolds in the opening pages. Family photos, traditions, and memories form the heart of her introduction, which she titles “The Ingredients of My Life.”
It is beautifully written, something another writer certainly appreciates. I learned that the colors and artwork that define The Prime Smokehouse came from her own eye for design and décor.
Her interpretation of her husband’s BBQ “joint” grew even more in the restaurant’s new location at Rocky Mount Mills. The interior colors, those warm, earthy tones, reflect the Kenyan savannah where she spent time in her youth.
When Ed Riley and Yalem first opened The Prime Smokehouse downtown, something remarkable happened. People began to come back. What had been an empty, quiet stretch of Main Street slowly found its heartbeat again.
The food, the music, the warmth of that place turned it into a destination, and little by little, folks got over their fear of returning to a part of town that had sat silent for too long.
Ask anyone who cares about the story of downtown Rocky Mount, and they will tell you: no one deserves more credit for that early wave of revival than this culinary couple.
In a town still learning how to believe in its own future again, it’s easy to forget the quiet heroes who helped light the way. Yalem and Ed did that, not with speeches or grand gestures, but with plates of food that reminded us we belong to one another.
Their tables have always been about more than meals; they’ve been a gathering place, a bridge, a way home.
This blog post is dedicated to both of them. Yalem’s new cookbook is a celebration of flavor, heritage, and the simple truth that we are connected, one recipe, one memory, one shared meal at a time.
Treat yourself to a copy, and then gift one to someone you love. You can find it on Amazon Prime at $25.00, a bargain in my view. I have a signed copy, which is now dear to me.
It is a beautiful reminder of how food carries the stories that bind us, and how two people in Rocky Mount have been quietly strengthening those ties these past years.
And as you turn its pages, may you feel what so many feel at The Prime Smokehouse and NABS: hospitality as art, community as practice, and the joy of being part of something larger than ourselves.
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Main Street Rocky Mount 