La Cuisine Magrebi

Rfissa from Morocco

According to Wikipedia: 

Maghreb cuisine is the cooking of the Maghreb region, the northwesternmost part of Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, consisting of the countries of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. Well-known dishes from the region include couscous, pastilla, tajine and shakshouka.

I have run across several Moroccan and Tunisian restaurants in Aix and since  Provence is so close to North Africa, and since France had colonies there from 1912 to 1956, we should try some, and hopefully they will be better than that horrible restaurant in Washington DC, where the food was bland, they charged a mint and didn’t take credit cards.

La Menara is a Moroccan restaurant that is not too far from the Adagio and that looks nice.  They have couscous, tajines and briwattes (boreks).   La Kahena is a Tunisian restaurant with lovely tiled walls and Tunisian dishware, so it’s very atmospheric.  Their lunch “menu” is pictured at the left but they have couscous and tagines as well.  Then there is La Table Tunisienne which offers fish dishes in addition to meat and vegetarian.  It is more informal and French fries come with all dishes, not uncommon.

I expected to find some Algerian restaurants but so far have only run across Tunisian and Moroccan.  Is the memory of Algeria’s fight for independence too strong?

The TasteAtlas has a list of the top 100 (not just 10!) foods from the Maghreb, and it’s not just tagines and couscous.  Some of the foods listed are street foods, many are celebratory dishes, and many are breads and sweets.  If I study that list, I should know what to look for.  Will I remember them all?  Not a chance.