A Very Random Night on Cap Hill

[saavedra77]

Last night, a coworker and I tried out Seattle's newer Moroccan restaurant, Mamounia, which just happens to be in Cap Hill (my neighborhood).  The food was excellent: Chicken slow-cooked to the point where it flakes apart at the touch (one of the beauties of Moroccan food is that they encourage you to eat with your fingers ...), in a sauce with white raisins; excellent mint tea; a "Moroccan Sunset" (brandy, rum, triple sec, something, something); and a dessert reminiscent of pound cake, with chocolate sauce.  Overall, dinner was comparable to what you'd get at the Marrakesh, down in Belltown--and while I think the service is better at Marrakesh, Mamounia is a more open space with a warmer ambience.

Meanwhile, I was trying to smile appreciatively but not too lecherously at the bellydancer, whose proximity I have to say sometimes made it difficult to maintain a train of thought, let alone conversation.  Not long after we finished our meal, she in fact gyrated over and asked me to get up and dance with her--of course winsomely pursuing a tip. I protested that I wasn't much of a dancer, but she insisted, and I wasn't going to be a stick in the mud, was I?  I probably looked pretty foolish, up there, but I felt like I was Perhan in the wedding scene in Time of the Gypsies (--Never seen it?  You SHOULD!  Fantastic, sad, beautiful movie).

Afterward, I took a walk through Cal Anderson Park (what we in the neighborhood like to call "Teletubbyland"), where I watched some guys (mostly bike messengers, it turned out) play bike polo--which, frankly, I'd never even heard of, before--on the soccer field, under a bright full moon.  Meanwhile, I listened to a couple of fellow spectators arguing (hopelessly, pointlessly) about whether there's a God or not ... 

Comments

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

I think I'm finally able to face Moroccan food again, but preferably in a place that will allow me to use silverware without offending the hosts. I lived in Morocco for a year when I was a kid, and let me tell you, it's only okay to eat with fingers of the RIGHT hand. Being left-handed, and fastidious, and not believing my Mom when she told me that really, the pigeons in the pie were raised for food and were not the flying rats which infested Casablanca... oh, and having to make it through umpty-many courses of food while doing justice to each somehow, sometimes at a Ramadan feast which took place well after my bedtime... well, I burned out on it for a while. :) (And I just realized that Morocco is where I learned NOT to clear my plate; if I did, they fed me more. Oof.)

That said, I may make couscous into dinner tonight. And I personally think the best cuisines in the world is the lovelinesses that is French chef's standards debased a generation or two of colonial; French-Moroccan, Algerian, Vietnamese, anything French-hyphenated. Mmm.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Our hosts were actually nice enough to offer silverware, which we accepted but ultimately didn't use. Also, I think I intuitively decided to eat with my right hand only--mostly to avoid having two sets of greasy fingers. But, thankfully, this being very far from Morocco indeed, it wasn't mandatory or anything: you could probably get away with eating with your left hand only in a place like Mamounia. This might scandalize some very traditional people, but no one seemed to mind my friend devouring everything they put in front of him literally with both hands ...