Eating Out - Moroccan

All of the orange colored food you could ever want.

Marrakesh Palace (Moroccan)

This time last year, we were fully committed to trying as many cuisines as possible. We made quite an effort to get out to different parts of the city and to sample different kinds of food every week. Well, to be quite honest, we've slacked off in recent months. Maybe it's because we know the city a little better so we're not driven to explore as much or because we now have a few favorite places close to home. Either way, I'm not going to take it anymore! I'm recommitting my effort to try as many interesting foods as I can find. I'm not settling for eating near the house. I'm going out into the city and into the suburbs to find interesting restaurants and new ethnic cuisines! So, this weekend, for the first time ever, we went out for Moroccan food which we knew literally nothing about...

Observations

• When I said just a second ago that we knew literally nothing about Moroccan food, that wasn't quite accurate. I thought I knew about Moroccan food. I thought it was basically Middle Eastern food, but I was wrong. It was nothing either of us had expected. So once I got there, I realized we knew literally nothing about Moroccan food. Given my limited understanding of the menu items, I asked the waitress what to get. She said everything is good, so based on that recommendation, here's what we tried.
• While we waited for our food, the waitress brought over a basket of warm bread and a dish of olives (watch out for the pits!). The bread had a thick, sort-of-beer-bread consistency, and the three kinds of olives were all pretty decent.
• We ordered the beef cigars appetizer - ground beef and vermicelli wrapped phyllo dough and topped with candied lemons. I didn't really expect the Moroccans to use any of these ingredients, let alone combine them all into one dish. It was just OK.
• For the main dish, Kathryn ordered the chicken couscous tfaya - a mix of couscous, sweet onions, chick peas, raisins, cinnamon, and toasted almonds. The dish was also topped with powdered sugar, that's right - powdered sugar. It was the sweetest damn entrée I've ever tried outside of a state fair.
• I had the chicken fassi tangine - an oven baked chicken with apricots. I thought the dish came with rice or something, but to my surprise, the roasted apricots were the side dish. Mine was also incredibly sweet. With all the sugar coursing through our veins, thank God we still had some olives sitting around!
• We were so tired of eating sweets that we didn't even look at the desert menu, but I can't imagine what a desert would look like from a country that tops their chicken with powdered sugar.
• In short, Moroccan food isn't really for us, but that's no knock against Marrakesh Palace. The place was beautifully decorated, the service was great, and it was obvious that the food was prepared very well. It just wasn't for us...