Saturday, I slept in hoping to put to rest any and all residual sickness from Friday’s adventures. Since I saved so much on food on Friday, I decided to treat myself to a nice restaurant. I did my research, and found a restaurant called “La Fabrique”. This French/International restaurant got great reviews, wasn’t too expensive, and was on a road that I recognized. As I found the address, I realized that I walk past the restaurant every day on my way to work. I really need to be more observant.
I walk in, get a table for one, and we mount the spiral staircase out of the empty lounge and into the empty dinning room. Legit, empty. It’s 2PM on a Saturday and the only other person in the whole restaurant is the waiter. I go for the 4-course menu and a glass of red and sit back and enjoy the ride. I will now go into excruciating detail about the meal, feel free to skip down to the next paragraph.
First the bread, a normal basket of baguette slices is brought with another plate of green olive tapinade and five really thin slices (like quarter inch thick). The appetizer is a green salad with a dill vinaigrette. The lettuce is a mixture of spicy greens, most notably in both taste and quantity being arugula. Sometimes the leaves overpowered my palate, so I would have mixed in some less knock your socks off leaves (say some baby spinach?). You can really taste the dill in the sauce, but they tried a little too hard and I could have done without the two full dill sprigs for garnish. They bring my glass of red during the salad, but it actually goes surprisingly well. Throw in a beefy cheese, and I could actually see the red-wine salad pairing. Something I’ll have to try. The wine is cold, and while I probably can’t be too picky if I keep ordering table wine, I think that’s a major rouge faux pas. Then comes the main course. Duck confit, mashed potatoes and something else (I stopped listening to the waiter after “duck” because it sounded so good.). The duck is beautifully layered with fat; I don’t think I could have gotten a bite of purely lean or fat unless I tried. It’s cooked perfectly and the demi-glaze drissled over top is very well done: just barely coating the back of a spoon. The potatoes are served in a 2” diameter cast iron ramekin, you have to take of the top and feel the steam rise. They’re well mashed and go great with the duck, I would have preferred a little lighter, but it contributed to the stick to your bones feel of the course. Finally a ratatouille sits off in the corner. It’s a little heavy on eggplant, but they’ve cooked it well enough that it doesn’t have that undesirable chewy texture. I have to wave off the bus boy because he thinks my sitting back with my eyes closed was an indication I was done; I was just enjoying the food. When I finally do finish, they take away my plate and I see a white woman walk out of the kitchen, I recognize her face from the website and ask as she walks by my table if she’s the chef. She is. She says for a minute or two, asking how my food was and explaining how French chefs are pretty common in the high end food industry in Morocco. She was very nice. She then left to eat lunch (finally someone else eating in this joint) with the GM. Just as soon as she leaves dessert comes out. Two scoops of vanilla ice-cream topped with whipped cream and an unidentified orange fruit. They also bring the espresso. I’m used to eating dessert and then drinking coffee, but I’m glad I mixed the two. The sweetness and cold of the ice cream and the bitterness and hot of the coffee mixed perfectly together. I now see where the idea for coffee ice cream came from. The mystery fruit an orange berry slightly smaller than a cherry. It’s brown leaves are intact and look like the wings of a dead dragonfly (in a good way….) it’s tangy and sour, and completed the flavor spectrum of the meal.
More than satisfied, I leave my 23 bucks (not bad for a 2-star, 4-course meal with wine eh), thank the chef again and immediately head for a nap.
The second notable meal of the week happened Monday when Imad and headed out for a coffee after work. He then asks if I’ve eaten some traditional Moroccan soup (still cant say the name of it). I hadn’t and was really eager to try. We sit down in a run-down restaurant/deli in Bir Chifae next to a man just finishing his sandwich. His area is covered with crumbs and bits of sandwich, and is face dripping with sauce. The waiter/chef/dishwasher/Owner brings us two bowls of soup, a baguette torn in half, and a plate of sliced over-processed spicy sausage and two hard boiled eggs. We then began to eat like cavemen. Tearing bread in big hunks dipping it into the soup and shoving the whole thing into your mouth, snatching bits of sausage off the communal plate. Picking up the bowl and drinking the soup greedily. The soup is a slightly watered down tomato soup, heavily spiced and herbed with some tiny noodles lurking at the bottom. I asked Imad if I could have a glass for the communal pitcher of water. He looked at me strangely and then pointed to the tin cup in front of from man across from us. I nodded. He pointed again. I then took the pitcher of water, poured it into the cup and drank the luke-warm liquid. I asked Imad if he wanted some and handed him the cup and pitcher. This meal wasn’t for the prudish or agoraphobics but I loved every second of it. It was the first time I have actually felt 100% culturally immersed… and that I’ve been able to put my elbows on the table without getting stabbed with a fork by my mother.
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