[Sca-cooks] OOP - Moroccan restaurant review by CHARLES PERRY

[Susan Laing]

Found this review @ LATimes.online

Mr Perry mentions "honey lamb (mrouzia--chunks of flavorful, slightly gamy
lamb braised with honey, raisins and prunes" in this review as being from
the Middle Ages.

Anyone made it/have the recipe handy? (still awaiting delivery of my copy of
Perry's book "Medieval Arab Cookery" so don't know if it's in there)

:-)

Mari

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http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Restaurants-X!PlaceDetail-35764,00.html
Moroccan restaurant review -      --By CHARLES PERRY, Times Staff Writer
August 2, 2001

Mamounia  132 N. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills 310-360-7535

	The belly dancer wriggled into the room in a clamor of tinkling finger
cymbals. "Gosh, this makes me think of my mom," said one of my guests. I
suppose that's the curse of being a belly dance
teacher's daughter. For most of us, though, belly dancing probably suggests
Middle Eastern nightclubs or restaurants. Americans will always love any
place where you get to recline on        pillows and eat with your fingers.
Throw in a belly dancer and the Moroccan hand-washing
ceremony, and you've got a party. On Friday and Saturday, Mamounia in
Beverly Hills really
jumps. It's a smallish room with just eight or 10 tables, so instead of
dancing on a stage or among a lot of tables, the dancer works on a narrow
dance floor close to everybody, and the result is less like a
show than an exuberant private party. In fact, it's a little like a party in
a Middle Eastern home when the boys in the family have decided to pick up
the oud and drum and cajole baby sister into dancing  for the guests in her
street clothes (not that this is street-clothes belly dancing; the dancer is
skilled and definitely goes through her share of costume changes during the
evening). Altogether, Mamounia is a distinctly homey place. It has its share
of Moroccan décor--brass lamps, antique wood panels, a low wall of
ornamental wrought iron, a triangular mirror shaped like a Berber clasp. You
sit on low benches covered with red rugs and pillows,  where the wall is
lined with more rugs to about head level. There's a tiny, closet-like
semiprivate room, entered though an arch-topped doorway and covered with
rugs stapled to the walls. For a Moroccan restaurant, it's distinctly
easygoing and low-key.
	The meal (there's no menu) is a multi-course affair with a choice of no
more than three or four main dishes, which always seem to include the
universal favorites lemon chicken and honey lamb.
You start, as usual in our Moroccan restaurants, with a slightly spicy
lentil soup called harira. It's like a smooth-textured, somewhat bland
minestrone, and definitely needs the lemon wedge it's served
with. Around the same time you get a basket of very fresh, slightly crunchy
bread baked on the premises. The next course, a platter of salads, is your
first opportunity to eat with your fingers. The
cucumber salad is rather plain and the boiled carrots pretty simple too, but
the eggplant salad is
like a rich, concentrated Italian caponata. I've had it sprinkled with both
black and green olives,
and the black olives were particularly meaty.  Then comes a small bestila,
the sugar-sprinkled filo pie filled with chicken and nuts. The  nuts tasted
oddly like peanuts to me, but the waiter assured me they
were a mix of toasted walnuts and almonds. Unlike a lot of Moroccan
restaurants, Mamounia doesn't serve its bestila so hot that you burn your
fingers on it.
	Also unlike some Moroccan restaurants, Mamounia doesn't require everybody
at the table to order the same entrée. Usually the favorite is honey lamb
(mrouzia--chunks of flavorful, slightly gamy lamb braised with honey,
raisins and prunes until very tender. Mrouzia is so attractive that it's odd
to think that in the Middle Ages, it wasn't just a dish of North Africa--it
was eaten all across the
Arab world and clear up to Turkmenistan in Central Asia, where it
originated. How could it have died out?  Mamounia's version of lemon chicken
is tender, flavorful and attractive too, but not very typical--there are
hardly any olives and very little pickled lemon in it. The effect is more of
chicken than of any flavorings, though there is an odd taste like bacon.
There's likely to be a kebab of one kind or another. I've had shrimp
kebab--two skewers of shrimp, skewered lengthwise--and quail kebab. Too
often quail is dry and rather dull, but here it's moist and subtly spiced
with cumin.
Dessert is always baklava, unusually long and skinny pieces and very crisp,
filled with the same nuts as the bestila, followed by a bowl of wholesome
fruit, which everybody's usually too full to touch.
	This is a very pleasant place that Beverly Hills seems barely aware
of--it's just north of Wilshire Boulevard on a stretch of Robertson
Boulevard without many businesses. But it's worth checking out, even on a
weeknight when it's just a Moroccan restaurant, not a belly dance party.

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