Journey to this Marrakesh is a culinary adventure
Warm service, generally excellent dishes help Moroccan restaurant rise above mall setting
It would be easy to mistake Marrakesh, a new Moroccan restaurant in the outdoor shopping plaza of Clifton Park Center mall, for any another Mediterranean eatery. Food photos pressed around the glass doors aim to entice those wandering the parking lot, and a sidewalk board promises sandwiches and lunchtime specials. Since the space was recently vacated by a Turkish restaurant, some will walk in not knowing it has changed hands, going to North Africa from the Middle East.
Your first impression is the air — scented, as it would be in a traditional Moroccan home. Decorations brought from Fez, Safi and Marrakesh dot walls and line the backs of booths in mirrored pinks, copper and turquoise; decorative tagines — the funnel-shaped earthenware cooking vessel from which Moroccan stews take their name — are stacked like hats behind the bar; Arab-andalusian music sets the mood. Our warm welcome starts with an invitation to sit in the softly furnished living area where sofas embroidered in burgundy and gold line the walls behind brass trays around which low hassock cushions are grouped. Before tasting one flavorful bite, other senses are already tuned in.
Unveiling characteristic Moroccan hospitality, staff pull silver teapots to respectful heights, pouring hot mint tea in streaming ribbons that froth in each cup. The color pages of a menu anchored by shawarma, kebabs and diced Berber salads (cucumber, parsley and tomatoes bright with lemon and olive oil) turn more mysterious with marrakshee, casawe and shamalee tagines that sound exotic on the tongue; some marry savory and sweet, embracing honey, cinnamon, prunes and aromatic spices to infuse slow-braised meat that slides from great bones.
Later, when the painted lower halves of our tagines arrive, they fill every curve of the round copper table, jostling baskets of warm pita bread and saffron rice puffing out breaths of warm cardamom air. Spiced groundbeef kafta meatballs bob in paprika-tinged stew in which a cooked egg, pierced, leaks gold. A turmeric-stained lamb shank flaked in an armor of sheer almond scales sticks out like a brass handle from the sweet, dark sauce; caramelized onions, raisins and prunes contrast with the tender meat’s full, grass-fed scent.
Couscous — steamed and rubbed with olive oil three times so the tiny semolina grains swollen with moist air won’t stick — tumbles in a cascade of loose pearls when disturbed by hungry spoons.
The chef-owner, Adam El Ghazaoui, grew up in Casablanca, Morocco, where he trained as a junior engineer before completing a degree in finance and management at the University at Albany. But he began to cook in middle school, taught by his mother and grandmother and breaking traditional Moroccan rules that keep men out of the kitchen. In time, he tells with some confidence, his five brothers, two sisters and even
his mother, came to prefer his cooking. Annual trips home still require visits to the souk (bazaar) for hard-to-find spices for his ras el hanout, a revered North African spice blend in which the balance of 27 ingredients makes each unique.
Unlike Indian food, where spices impart flavor and heat during cooking, aromatic Moroccan spices — among them cumin, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, fenugreek, sumac, saffron, chile and mace in endless unions — are left overnight in lingering contact with grilled vegetables and meats, infusing them with aromas more than heat.
Placing your order is no time to be shy. Moroccans order generously, sharing an assortment of spiced vegetable purees: eggplant and peppers that have been roasted over a grill until blistered and chickpeas whipped to cream.
Perhaps sensing indecision, our server suggests a sampler of four, to which we add savory pastries that round out a traditional arrangement of appetizers (kemia): Moroccan cigars are crisp wonton wrappers filled with shrimp, olives and threads of seasoned vermicelli; chicken bastille, a flaky phyllo parcel blanketed in sifted cinnamon-sugar, is stuffed with chicken, crushed almonds and sweet rosewater; and onions sweated to a paste with cooked egg. It sends the brain into delicious confusion over sweet-savory tastes.
We swab soft pita bread in hummus made silken and creamy with an excess of tahini and scoop up seedy smoked eggplant in garlicky baba ghanoush. In zaatouk, the smokiness is sweetly engineered, shimmering in an olagineous tomatoey stew spiked with garlic, cilantro and harissa, the Moroccan chile paste that deploys a subtle undercurrent of spice. Our fourth is taktouka, in which slowcooked roasted green and red peppers meld with tomatoes and olive oil for something close to ratatouille warmly tugged south by distinctly Moroccan accents of cumin, paprika and chile. Across similar dishes, cleverly adjusted spices subtly shift flavors from one to the next.
I venture back for more, delighting in the collagen-thickened sauce of lamb Meknesee dripping umami juices from slow-cooked meat, and in artichoke hearts carved to smooth discs like upturned mushroom caps and filled with peas. There’s more: Tender chicken in a casawe boasting the same sweet tfaya sauce and a rust-colored tomato and paprika shamalee threaded with chermoula and preserved lemon turns submerged chunks of tilapia and potatoes into mystery bites.
You might close your meal with hot mint tea or dark coffee pricked with white pepper and honeydrenched pistachio baklava. Broader offerings of sweet pastries have temporarily stopped with the loss of the pastry chef, though they are working on desserts and plan to bake Moroccan bread.
Complaints are minimal: The kefta meatballs in one guest’s Marrakshee tagine needed to be better warmed through, and harira, a tomato-based soup typically used to break the fast during Ramadan, is usually fragrant from slow-simmered spices yet on one visit felt lentil-heavy and surprisingly bland.
The culinary heritage of the sous chefs — Alan Yacob from Syria and Regina Hingi from Botswana — dovetail with Morocco’s Arabic, Moorish and sub-sahara African influences. Though El Ghazaoui hasn’t had a day off since opening in February, they now shoo him from the kitchen, encouraging him to take a break.
A sample of four vegetable dips ($14), two tagines and hot mint tea for two will cost $74 with tax, before tip. No alcohol is permitted or sold.
Unlike Indian food, where spices impart flavor and heat during cooking, aromatic Moroccan spices — among them cumin, cinnamon, ginger, turmeric, fenugreek, sumac, saffron, chile and mace in endless unions — are left overnight in lingering contact with grilled vegetables and meats, infusing them with aromas more than heat.
Susie Davidson Powell is a British freelance food writer in upstate New York. Follow her on Twitter, @Susiedp. To comment on this review, visit the Table Hopping blog, blog.timesunion. com/tablehopping.