For about a month or so, I’ve been making mention of my desire to go to a Moroccan restaurant. I’ve wanted to go to one for years now. I think it all started when I watched the 1995 version of Sabrina with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond. There’s a scene in that movie in which Linus and Sabrina (Ford and Ormond’s characters) eat at what I always believed to be a Moroccan restaurant (not sure if I was right though). I always romanticized the idea, thinking about how exotic and flavorful the food would be.
Looking back, I think that in reality I didn’t want to go to “a Moroccan restaurant,” I think I just wanted to eat in the restaurant where the movie was filmed. But I don’t think I would have come to this realization without one of my most recent adventures… my first Moroccan restaurant experience ever, at a place in downtown Brussels named “Touareg”. While great, it was nothing like the movie. For example, we sat in chairs, not on the floor. And no one there was eating with their hands. For Sabrina’s sake, I must say that I’m sure the food would have tasted better if we had. But there’s always next time.
The best part of the night was after I began to eat my couscous with veggies, and I realized that I have cooked this exact meal for myself multiple times back home!! Oh, the irony!
Little did I know that couscous was a traditional Moroccan item. I need some serious education about Morocco.
I still have yet to discover the meaning of the word Tajine, which is what each of my friends ordered (served in the cool teepee-shaped dish seen below). Next time I go to a Moroccan restaurant, I’ll have to ask. In the meantime, the presentation was pretty great, and so was the flavor. We all enjoyed our meals 🙂
Just as we finished eating, our waiter asked if we would like some traditional Moroccan mint tea (probably because we had a big discussion with him about the tea before our meal). But alas, we had to leave since we were headed to see Oz, The Great and Powerful at Toison D’or theater down the street. So we said, “we need to go.” A couple minutes later, he arrived with our check, as well as some complimentary mint tea 🙂 I love it when that happens! So we were able to enjoy some of our tea as we scrounged up the money to pay for all of this delicious stuff.
Even after enjoying our tea, we still made it inside the theater in time to watch all of the previews 🙂 BTW, the new Oz movie really isn’t all that great, unless you don’t care about great writing or acting. But this was my first time at Toison D’or, and the seats themselves are reason enough to bring me back! Super comfortable!
A la prochaine 🙂
adventurousglasses 