Marrakesh, Morocco
May 9 (Thursday)
I’m a bit behind on the chronology here, but thought I’d post about our May 6 birthday dinner for Dave in Rabat. It was Dave’s 30th and we wanted to celebrate it in style. After wandering back and forth down the same street in the medina looking for our restaurant, we finally found it, and the riad that houses it. Riads are like basically big fancy mostly-vertical homes with multiple levels and a big open courtyard space in the middle that have now been converted into small guesthouses (like between three and seven rooms). The proprietors of these micro hotels are known for their very generous and welcoming nature, taking in weary travellers and offering green mint tea, a cozy bed and all the best travel advice you’d like to hear about the local area, including recommendations on things to do, see and avoid. Here’s the kind of general feel of them (from Riad Oudaias):
Riad Oudaias, while open to guests, was actually closed for dinner, but the owner was nice enough to take us over to another restaurant owned by the same chef. We went in and sat down, but the menu said “menu touristique” and there were two large tables of American retirees and we weren’t really feeling the vibe, so we left and went to Becca’s favorite restaurant in Rabat, Dinarjat. The interior was pretty spectacular:
It's a restored 17th century Andalusian style house in the heart of the medina, with a contemporary style that still keeps with tradition (parroting Lonely Planet here). We sit at a round white table next to a burbling fountain in the center of the restaurant, looking up at the arches and stonework above.
The copper lanterns above and the delicate mosaics all around us amid these soaring columns and arches gives an authentic and local feel. We have an enormous and delicious meal. We order a bottle of red wine, and as an appetizer we order a sweet and savory pigeon pie which is quite good (Dave said he had pigeon in Paris and it was the best bird he has ever eaten – this one is sweet too; its flaky exterior is covered in powdered sugar) and a series of Moroccan salads (pictured below).
We get cauliflower, beans, carrots, beats, liver, peppers, eggplant, and … a mystery dish none of us can quite figure out. Which actually was my favorite of the eight plates. It has a soft, tofu-like texture. None of us can figure it out. Tofu? Cheese? Chicken? None of them seem right. Becca suggests maybe brains. Brains? Really? Cow brains? Becca asks our server to confirm, which he does. And we all kind of look at that dish in a new light (see above photo, first plate to the right of the plate closest to the camera). New foods tried, check. Unanticipated culinary adventure, check.
We're feeling pretty good by this point, despite the brains, and the main courses arrive: four tajines. Becca gets lamb and prunes, Saumya gets lamb and eggplant, Dave gets lamb and almonds? I get the chicken and almonds and onions (I’ve basically abandoned my vegetarianism in this country: if I stuck with it, I’d be eating omelets and vegetarian pizzas the whole time in Morocco; I continue to struggle with this choice, to some degree, but given the importance of food here, I don’t want to miss anything). It’s quite good. An enormous amount of chicken, however. We each get a little roll to wipe up the fantastic sauce. We're stuffed at this point, but Becca wisely orders the flaky, crispy, sweet but not too sweet pastilla for dessert.
We are sort of food coma'd out and then suddenly the power goes off, to everyone’s shock, and the whole place is plunged into darkness. Must be a power outage. Becca said in Senegal they have power outages all the time, but it’s very rare in Rabat. And then the pastilla comes out, with five candles, and the oud (lute) player and drummer break out into song with the waitresses. First a round of happy birthday in French, then in English, then in French again. I fumble for my camera, get a picture with the flash on, and then off and then Dave blowing out the candles. He's sort of shocked and we all laugh about how they probably cut the power to the city block to pull off this little trick.
Becca orders an after-dinner mint tea for the table and the waiter comes out and pours it from over his head down to a tray at about waist-height (this is the typical Moroccan style of tea pouring). The trick is to get the tea to foam, Becca says. That shows you’ve got it down. The tea is quite good: delicate and not nearly as sweet as Cafe Maure.
Food-drunk and delirious with flavors, we waddle out the door with a bunch of other westerners and follow an old man in a fez with a candle lantern to the main street and hail a cab to her car.
All in all, I think Dave’s birthday dinner was pretty awesome. Could have used a few more versions of Happy Birthday as performed by the staff, though, maybe a little beatbox. But the brains were a surprise addition and I think in the end, a welcome one at the beginning of his new decade.* So welcome to Real Time Adulthood, my friend.
* I guess if we could have known we had ordered brains ahead of time, we could have made Dave’s birthday zombie themed? (Braaaaains, braaaaains!). Gotten the staff to dress up like Michael Jackson Thriller Zombies and done the dance? A Thriller Birthday Dance? A birthday cake with an undead hand clawing up out of the cakey “earth?” I think I may have a profitable business model here. Dibs.
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