Anyway, I’ll get back to food in Rome, but first: Morocco!
It took us a few days to get into the swing of local Moroccan food, since the first night we were invited out for drinks with some British and American expats at the home of some friends of our friend Stefan, who owns the gorgeous hotel, Riad Dar Jameel, where we stayed in Tangier. We had a great time and drank Moroccan wine (which is surprisingly good) and ate take-out pizza from the local Pizza Hut--especially funny to us since we’d just come from Rome, where my saganaki quest had been replaced by an obsession with Roman pizza. To be fair, the Pizza Hut in Tangier is pretty good! And the company was even better!
The second night we went out to dinner with Stefan, who suggested a French restaurant, Le Relais de Paris. While French food is not exactly "Moroccan," it is still local, French being the second official language (and culture) of Morocco. Many locals who don’t speak English do speak French, which came in handy for us more than once. Moroccan Arabic actually seems to contain a lot of French words and expressions. (On the train from Tangier to Marrakesh later that week, three people in our compartment held an animated conversation (nonstop for three hours, sigh) that seemed to switch back and forth between Arabic and French the way Puerto Rican girls on the New York subway used to do with English and Spanish. Not sure if that was the case here, or if that’s just the way Moroccan Arabic is, but it was odd to suddenly understand a few sentences in the middle of an otherwise incomprehensible exchange). In any case, this restaurant is run by friends of Stefan’s. Tangier is a pretty small community so most of the business owners tend to know--or at least know of--each other. And Stefan, of course, knows where the good restaurants are.
But back to the food! Le Relais de Paris features seafood, and here we were, by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea (actually, the Bay of Tangier and Strait of Gibraltar). So fish it was: a lovely sea bass (my favorite) for me and some John Dory for both Paul and Stefan (who are both English and John Dory is apparently an English thing; it’s a simple, meaty white fish) and starters of salad with scallops and gambas (little shrimp), both of which were delicious. Those who remember my rant about shrimp in their shells will be relieved to know that these were very small prawns and were not only wonderfully garlicky (like the Spanish gambas ajillo, except not swimming in oil) and mouth-party yummy, but were decidedly OUT of their shells. Speaking of mixing languages, this menu listed salade de gambas, which rather mixed up French and Spanish. All well, you can actually SEE Spain from the terrace of the restaurant. [Feel free to insert your own Sarah Palin joke here.]
Okay, okay. MOROCCAN food. Tagine. Couscous. Olives. Spices. Mmmmmmmm.
So: the first trick to finding a good restaurant in Tangier is actually finding it. You can think that you’ll be able to navigate the twists and turns of the Medina, but don’t kid yourself. Most places you’ll never find on your own without serious directions. Not to mention finding your way back! We were lucky enough to have not only Stefan’s guidance, but the help of the rest of the staff at Dar Jameel. For our third night in Tangier, Stefan couldn’t join us but recommended a place called Le Nabab. It’s just around the corner, he said. Well, yes, but…. Luckily, the very nice young clerk who was manning the night desk at Dar Jameel decided it would be easier to
take us there than to explain how to get there. Sure enough, it was just around the corner--and then turn that next corner and now you're behind the riad, then go up and turn right then left and right up the stairs. Needless to say, though it took only about three minutes to get there, we would NEVER have found the place on our own.
The Medina, I’ve come to learn, is not twisty and turny and completely impossible to navigate by accident. In addition to being the old market neighborhood of North African cities, the narrow streets and impenetrable maze provided a defense of the city behind the Medina. Invaders coming by sea (in the case of Tangier, at least) would have a damn hard time making their way through. In more modern times, it’s also proved handy for leading tourists into your relatives’ shops while pretending to guide them through the maze to their hotels.
Anyway, Le Nabab. Up at the edge of the Medina, the restaurant was spacious and lovely and just about empty. More diners arrived while we were there, I’m happy to report, because the food and the service here are both great. Most important, we finally had tagine. I wavered between chicken with olives and lemon and chicken with apricot (the waiter’s favorite). What decided it was a memory from that day’s lunch. We’d eaten at a touristy French place near the beach, with unremarkable food except for the bowl of olives they’d placed on the table. They were stuffed with preserved lemons and were so good we ate two bowls of them. So, for the first time, I ordered a tagine of chicken with olives and lemon. A seminal moment! Paul had lamb with couscous.
We started with a selection of Moroccan salads. Cucumbers! So happy to see them again (they don’t seem to figure into Roman salads). And with tomatoes! But that’s where the resemblance to Greek and Turkish cucumber-and-tomato salads ends. The tomatoes have been stewed in spices whose names are known to locals and the Gods of Food, but not to me (but I’m hoping to find out). Another salad featured eggplant (which made Paul really happy) and yet another had carrots and I forget what else. All in tidy circle molds on the plate. Did I remember to take a picture? Sadly, no. All were delicious, and so was the bread. Moroccan bread in all its guises is dangerously addictive.
For those who might not be familiar with the concept, a tagine is both a way of cooking food and the vessel--a round plate with raised edges with a cone-shaped top--in which it is cooked and presented. Our entrees both arrived in plain tagines and were unveiled with all due ceremony. The sauce and spices on the the chicken were good enough to inspire weeping and much cleaning of the plate with yet more bread. The lamb was also delicious (we switched for a bit) but the chicken was the clear winner.
We also had a bottle of Moroccan wine, again at the suggestion of the waiter. Frankly, not realizing that the wine we’d had on our first night was local, I was afraid it was going to be like Turkish wine, which ranges from undrinkable to, well, sort of drinkable. But this was great. We bought another bottle to take "home" with us.
As it turns out, chicken with olives and lemon became the dish celebre of our Moroccan interlude. I tried (and mostly succeeded) to have it every day once we got to Marrakesh, especially after we had the dish as cooked by the miraculous Wafaa at the Riad Aguerzame on our first night there.
But first, we had one more night in Tangier. That afternoon, we took a walk up to the Casbah, the ramparts and adjoining neighborhood above the Medina. We actually managed to shake the "new best friends" who attach themselves to you like barnacles and insist on guiding you whether you want to be guided or not. The secret was not so much ignoring them completely (which is a start but which frankly usually doesn’t work) as then ignoring their "no don’t go that 
way, there's nothing there" and ending up in a residential part of the lower Casbah that is free of barnacles and new best friends. Paul and I walked along the ramparts and through the streets of the Casbah neighborhood (it had been confided to us that residents of the Casbah look down (figuratively as well as literally) on their neighbors in the Medina) then made our way down a hill and back to the northern (I think!) edge of the Medina. "We’ve been lost here before," I said to Paul, appropriating one of my dad’s bad jokes (which he, I believe, learned from his father). It was a key moment for me: I actually knew where we were! And (sort of!) how to get back to the hotel from there. Believe me, in the Medina of Tangier, this is no mean feat.
But I digress. On that road where we’d been lost before we passed the restaurant Hammadi, which is in all the guidebooks under local Moroccan food. As we passed, a tour group from the Hotel Continental (a large western-style hotel very near our riad hotel), herded by a djellaba-wearing guide holding the obligatory flag pole, exited the restaurant. I’m a New Yorker: I immediately thought of Mama Leone’s (now defunct) in the theater district, where for decades every hapless tourist staying anywhere near Times Square was fed mediocre spaghetti and meatballs. "Not going there!" said Paul, who is not a New Yorker but who also has a horror of tourist restaurants. Instead, we found a restaurant on TripAdvisor, Saveur de Poissons (Taste of Fish!), that sounded good. The reviews were in French and Italian but we caught the word Berber in there (Berbers are the indigenous people of northern Africa), so figured there would be a Moroccan influence to the
seafood.
To think, we nearly missed this experience! While chatting with our friend the night desk clerk at the hotel, Paul happened to mention seeing the tour group at Hammadi, and the clerk, a native of Tangier, opined to our surprise that Hammadi is one of his favorite restaurants. Huh. "Should we go there instead?" I asked my husband. "Certainly," Paul replied, since we always prefer a recommendation from a local. Not to mention, it was closer than Saveur de Poissons and we (sort of) knew how to get there.
I am happy and proud to announce that I not only found Hammadi without further directions, but that I also found Saveur de Poissons after we arrived at Hammadi, realized that we were the only customers in the very large restaurant and that the menu was weirdly limited and clearly geared for tourists, and learned that they were out of fish for the fish tagine, which gave us an excuse to make our exit. Lucky us! Probably Hammadi would have been perfectly fine. But we were about to have an "experience."
Saveur de Poissons is just outside the Medina up in "town." We’d been to town a few times (I had a pedicure!) so I had a basic idea of where Avenue de la Liberté was. We found Escalier Waller, where the restaurant is located, almost by accident and by realizing that of course "escalier" means "stairway" in French. There was a small crowd outside the restaurant. "Are we all waiting to get in?" we asked. Yes indeed, we were.
We were happy and lucky to meet a lovely Moroccan woman who spoke perfect English. When I complimented her on it, her companions laughed. She is, she said, an English teacher from Rabat. She was there visiting a friend and we all had a nice chat while we waited for a table in the small restaurant. We found out later that her name is Zineb. Fortuitous timing: not only did we meet very nice people, but we got the scoop on the restaurant. There is no menu. Everyone gets the same meal and it’s whatever the eccentric Berber owner and chef decided what was for dinner that night. The price was fixed and not expensive. No wine or coffee would served. (I know what you’re thinking about the "no wine" thing. Stop it. Stop it right now.)
The restaurant is crowded, but in a nice way. The little owner is buzzing around carrying plates of food, talking to it—or about—as he bustles. It sounds to Paul and me like he’s saying "wakka wakka wakka" but Zineb said he’s eccentric (no kidding!) and is muttering to himself and the world about how good the food is and how good it is for you. Maybe he was doing that as well, but later, in Marrakesh, Wafaa told us that "wakka wakka" means something like "okay okay," which had actually been my guess!
In addition to no wine or coffee, there’s no air conditioning, and it gets HOT in this place. The little owner came by and fanned me with a straw fan, then gave it to Paul and instructed him to fan me with it. Which he did. What a nice husband I have.
Oh wait: you want to hear about the food? Ah, well, first the waiter (such as he was) spread some paper on the table (which was already covered with a well-worn plastic tablecloth). Then he brought a huge bowl heaping with four different kinds of bread, a bowl of black oliv
es, a bowl of nuts, and a smaller bowl with some kind of red sauce. The nuts were delicious but hard to place. Somewhere between a peanut (I know, not technically a nut) and an almond. We found out from Zineb that they are in fact almonds that have been boiled and peeled, and then baked. They were so good; I’m going to have to try to make that. The olives were yummy and steeped in a spicy oil that was great with the bread. Oh, the bread: the top layer was, of all things, a big crumpet. There were also layers of paper-thin brown flatbread, an almost spongy white flat-but-thick bread, and the ubiquitous brown bread we’d had everywhere in Tangier. What was in the sauce? There were tomatoes, there were spices, who knows what else. It was great with everything. Next came soup: a fish soup that was not-at-all fishy. It seemed to have a potato base and was almost bland but then you realize that it’s not so much bland as subtle. ("Subtle," by the way, is not a word generally used to describe Moroccan dishes. Neither is "bland.") Next came a very hot dish of bite-sized seafood sizzling in oil and spinach and yet more unidentifiable-but-delicious spices. Tiny little shrimp, rings of calamari, little bites of swordfish or something like it. Yummy and eaten with yet more bread. Then a big plate with a whole fish--John Dory again, Paul said, served whole and festooned with parsley and other herbs. On the side, two swordfish kebabs in yet more and different spices.
As mentioned earlier, wine is not served here (it’s a Muslim thing). Instead, there’s a pitcher of thick fruit juice that’s poured into short stem glasses. Hard to tell what’s in there: plums, I think, grapes, other things as well. When Paul asked the waiter what it was, the answer was "fruit." Not much English spoken at Saveur de Poissons and, despite its name, not a whole lot of French either. For dessert we were brought a dish of the boiled/baked almonds with honey and barley and huge slices of a honeydew-like melon running with juice. But before we could eat it, the little owner came by and pulled a bag of some dark powder out of his pocket. Good for digestion, good for liver, is what we made out what he was saying. He placed a pinch of it in my hand and mimed knocking it back. But wait! You need a big piece of melon ready to follow it--whether for the bitterness or as some sort of activating ingredient, I don’t know. He gave some powder to Paul as well, and a nice bit to take home with us. I guess it could seem strange to ingest without question some weird powder in a foreign country where you don’t know the language. But we went with it, what the heck. We were then taken into a back room lined with ceramic pots. Dipping thick oil into a plastic container, he handed it to us saying "good for skin!" If I can figure out how to bring it home, I will. We also left with a basket ("for market," he said) and a set of the rather strange wooden utensils we’d eaten with earlier. Plus the fan.
Zineb and I exchanged email addresses as we left. I hope I hear from her. Coming up: Food in Marrakesh. (And Italy, I won’t forget.)
More photos of Tangiers:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2211782100079.2133967.1413317805&l=1167953235&type=1
