Tajine Tafraoute Project

Place: Tangierino (Charlestown, MA)

Tajine Partner: Nadja, very close friend

How I found out about it: Word of mouth and online: Tangierino is supposed to be one of the best restaurants in Boston.

Dinner this evening was a (very) late birthday present for Nadja. I had wanted to take her to the Chippendale’s show in Boston — what could be better than beefcakes in sailor suits stripping down to American-flag-print boxers while lip syncing to “America the Beautiful” remixed to a house beat? Or watching a star-struck housewife get face-humped by three tool-belt wearing studs? — but, after clicking through three Ticketmaster screens (each of them added another ridiculous fee) and trying to decipher those impossibly stretched-out words for “security reasons,” I threw in the towel.

I made reservations for Tangierino, which is reputed to be one of Boston’s best restaurants. It’s certainly the most well known Moroccan place around. We stepped inside: dim red lighting, sheer canopies, maroon couches arranged around low-lying tables. It felt exactly like any Westerner’s conception of Morocco: sexy, exotic, lots of pillows.

After a ten minute wait — we sat on comfy chairs near the front, the bar was too crowded — we were led to our table and seated next to each other on a couch. (Note: don’t come here on a first date, unless you’re prepared to get cozy.) The glass covered table was scattered with rose petals. A man came to our table with a silver basin and poured rose-scented water over our hands. Fancy.

We ordered two drinks off the extensive and innovative cocktail menu: my martini-style Sex in Agadir was good but a little on the sweet side, Nadja’s minty Rocks of Gibraltar was better. We split the Chicken B’Stilla appetizer: two triangular pastries filled with chicken and toasted almonds, topped with powdered sugar and served with a side of yogurt dip. It wasn’t too sweet or too thick, just enough to whet the palate, a little tease before we dug into the real headliners of the evening: the Tajine of Lemony Chicken and the Tajine of Chicken Couscous. (We skipped the third tajine on the menu, the Tajine of Wild Salmon).

This would be Nadja’s first tajine. I tried not to build it up too much, but failed rather miserably. I was confident: waiters were delivering a steady stream of tajines, and if everyone was ordering it, it had to be good, right?

Nope.

I poked at the “lemony chicken,” which was hidden beneath a generous portion of pommes fries and a smattering of green olives. A brief archaeological dig with my fork — where were the vegetables? The tender, falling-off-the-bone meat? — revealed nothing more. Just chicken, fries, and olives. I doubted that the chicken had even been cooked in the clay pot: the tajine was a serving dish, that’s all. Just for looks.

The chicken breast was thick, juicy, and had absorbed a mixture of spices: but it still lacked the “bursting with flavor” quality that is the tajine’s trademark.

Nadja was faring much worse: “This reminds me of food in Zambia.”

Her tajine: a chicken breast wedged next to a serving of couscous, on top of which someone had spread a thin layer of what appeared to be chunky-style pasta sauce. A waiter brought over a different, more liquid sauce (”for the couscous”) but Nadja’s excitement was short-lived, as the sauce did nothing to improve the bland flavor.

We switched. She liked mine better.

Her tajine was barely edible. The couscous tasted like cardboard. The bits of vegetables were tasteless. I rearranged, I stirred, I drenched the new mixture in sauce — anything to make it palatable — but it remained stubbornly bland. The chicken had a pleasant, moist consistency, but hardly any flavor.

Desert was an improvement. My chocolate souffle was rich with flavor and served with a side of vanilla ice cream.

We wanted to smoke a post-dinner hookah at the Casbah Lounge next door, so we waited for an open table. In the meantime, we got a little Chippendale’s show of our own: a belly dancer. Usually, I’m all for belly-dancing dinner entertainment, but this was a little weird, because the dancer — whose skirt was stuffed with bills — was actively seeking tips, and if she caught you watching, she’d target you. Given that our couch faced out into one of the only open spaces in the restaurant, we were forced to awkwardly avert our eyes for a long period of time. Not easy when someone is shaking her butt right in front of you.

After 45 minutes of waiting, and several fruitless inquiries about our “spot” on the waiting list, we left.

Bottom line:

The tajine is the decor here, a serving dish to fit in with the Moroccan theme. Reminds me of why I’m moving back to good ol’ NYC.

Rating: 3/10 (I’d give the Tajines a 2/10. But the drinks/appetizer/deserts were great)

Restaurant Details:

Tangierino
83 Pleasant St
Charlestown, MA 02129
(617) 242 - 6009
www.tangierino.com

Chippendales (I strongly recommend a visit to this site — it’s hilarious.) Read the rest of this entry »

Place: Amanouz Café, Northampton, MA. Birthplace of the Tajine Tafraoute Project.

Tajine Partner: Tim Horvath, short-story writer. (We’d met that week at Wellspring House, an artist/writer’s retreat).

How I found out about it: from Tim, who’d eaten there two days earlier while researching a story.

I’ll admit: I was a bit disappointed as I walked to the counter. Half the menu was taped onto the wall (written on bits of colored construction paper), and the other half was written on a chalkboard. From the outside, this place had looked like a sit-down restaurant. And, for a dish as serious as a tajine, it seemed weird to pay first and wait to have it delivered, café-style.

I know. I was taking things waaaaay too seriously. But cut me some slack. I was primed for a religious experience.

I told the Moroccan guy behind the counter that the best meal of my life had been a tajine in Tafraoute. (I couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant.) He nodded. He said he was from Tafraoute. Then, we both smiled. There wasn’t much to say.

There were no free seats, aside from a tiny table squished next to a refrigerator, so I squeezed in and hoped that I wouldn’t have to get up to pee during the meal. I glanced at the steaming plates of food on everyone else’s table, but I didn’t see the familiar clay tajine pot anywhere. This was disturbing.

I remembered that real tajines usually cook for a long time: about hour or so. This Amanouz Café couldn’t possibly serve up the real thing. (This, of course, is when Tim suggested that I embark on a quest to replicate the original tajine Tafraoute experience.)

Finally, after about twenty minutes, the tajines arrived, served in clay pots. The waitress lifted the conical tops and we dug in.

My tajine was delicious! I had it served over rice — totally inauthentic, I know — but it was moist all the way down to the bottom, with enough juices to flavor the rice. The vegetables (sautéed onions, thin slices of tomato, chopped carrots, green pepper, chunks of potato) were the perfect consistency, soft and easy to cut with a fork. There were four gigantic meatballs, each infused with an amazing array of garlicky spices (not too hot though — just right). The tajine was topped off with a cooked egg and a scattering of green olives.

I ate heartily, but only made it through half the dish. Good Jew that I am, I professed my wish to “get it to go.” But, like an even better Jew, I ended up digging in for a second round.

Rating: 8/10

An excellent tajine. Not transcendental, though. And I certainly couldn’t have had a spiritual experience squeezed up against a fridge.

Restaurant details:

Amanouz Café
44 Main St
Northampton, MA 01060
(413) 585-9128
www.amanouz.com

The spellings are interchangeable, as far as I know. I’ve decided to stick with tajine, for the sole reason that it turned up three times more google hits than tagine.

I wonder why this is?

The Tajine Tafraoute Project is my quest to replicate the most sublime food experience of my life: a transcendental tajine in Tafraoute, Morocco. December, 2005.

The quest began in March 2008, when Tim (a fellow Wellspring House retreating writer) and I went to Northampton, a town in central Massachusetts, for dinner. As we passed by the Amanouz cafe, a Moroccan place, two words on the chalkboard menu in the window caught my eye: “Tagine Tafraoute.”

I had to have one.

We ordered. While we were nervously awaiting our tagines, Tim half-joked that I could embark on a quest to replicate the perfect tagine. I took him half-seriously.

But why not? I love tajines, and I can’t eat all of them by myself. Besides, quests are fun.

So, here’s the deal:
I’ll go out with a different person to try a new tajine each time around. This way, we could try two tagines. And the tagines at each restaurant would be less likely to blur because they’d become intertwined with your face, your body odor, or, hopefully, your witty repartee. In effect, you’d be lending your likeness to my mental tajine snapshot.

I’ll write about each tajine experience, and the friend will be encouraged — but not required — to write as well.

The RULES, entirely subject to modification:

1. Wexler does not pay for your meal.

2. No tajine is off limits. Unless it’s not really a tajine.

3. Home-cooked tajines are allowed. This does not mean I help you cook.

4. The further off the beaten the track, the better.

Thus — it begins!