Restaurant Review

Day 8
June 14th

A week in the cross-roads of Africa and Europe! I can hardly believe that so much time has already gone by. It's also been hard to realize that my year in Aix is definitely finished. I keep mentioning it, "When I was in France…" "In France, they always…" I am really starting to sound like a snob. There is something that is inherently more snobby about constantly referencing your experiences in France than in any other country.

The weather has been really nice, too. Despite snickers that I die of the heat, humidity, and always being covered up, I have been doing well without A/C. It has ony been in the 80's and mildly humid. Usually, there's a nice breeze. But the summer will only get hotter!

The only criticism that I have after a week is the food. Yes, I have been pretty disappointed. Moroccan food is diverse, delicious, hearty, full of spices—and hard to find in restaurants. So far, the best food that I have had is at the cafeteria at the CCCL which is the closest to home-cooked Moroccan as possible. Brahim, the chef (who has a wonderful sense of humor) cooks all sorts of vegetable and meat ragouts and soups. For lunch on Friday, the entire staff of CCCL had a traditional couscous lunch at the center. About twelve people at a time sat around a round table laden with a huge clay dish full of couscous, chicken, and stewed vegetables. We each got a spoon and dug in. Moroccan table manners are simple—respect your zone, the triangular slice of the dish right in front of you, and never cross in front of someone else's spoon. The only part that I didn't absolutely love about the couscous lunch was the buttermilk. Oh yes, a huge glass of buttermilk is traditionally served with couscous lunch. Sadly, I am completely averse to drinking anything that looks, tastes, and separates just like soured milk.

After eating in restaurants for a whole week, I am getting pretty sick of the selection here. Most restaurants feature several choices: sandwich, pizza, or kebab with the option of lamb, beef, chicken, or tuna. Multiply that and you have twelve dishes to choose from. Everything comes with a side of French fries and mayonnaise. All of the salads are covered in mayonnaise as a dressing. I even went to a Syrian restaurant (one of the few ethnic restaurants in Rabat) where I had falafel, a shawarma sandwich and mayonnaise. It's much more than a condiment here; it's a style of cooking. Too bad I hate mayonnaise. Yes, after France, I grew to like the taste of raw egg but just thinking about it in combination with oil makes my poor arteries contract in fear. Maybe at the end of the summer, I will be able to add mayonnaise to the list of things that I learned to appreciate about Morocco. Until then, it's just going to continue to ruin my appetite. Hopefully, it's just the city of Rabat but I am afraid that it's actually the advent of Western culture, sadly misappropriated.

I also am getting tired of the greasy spoon restaurants. I am on a 50 dirham per meal or $7 budget which means no fancy restaurants everyday. So the ones that offer couscous at 25 dirham are very appealing, despite all appearances to the contrary. However, I have never been a fan of greasy spoon restaurants. This is something that I feel rather guilty about. I feel as though I should have a favorite greasy spoon place that I like to eat at regularly in the US. I don't. And I judge. I admit that now. Plastic chairs, flies, dirty tablecloths, and used ketchup bottles turn me off here just as much as they do in the US. Or in Spain for that matter. I still have bad memories of eating plain rice covered with ketchup labeled as "Cuban rice" in a greasy, smoke-filled hole in Barcelona. It was a waste of eight euros and completely unsatisfying. So although I must remind myself that cleanliness standards are different in Morocco, it's hard to let go of my normal standards. It is entirely possible to find good, clean, cheap restaurants here--you just have to look. I found one right near my hotel last night that serves the same things as all the rest, yet it's much cleaner and has a huge flat screen TV. It will probably be my new favorite place to eat dinner.

This is not to say that I am picky or a germophobe. I can eat a meal in a filthy restaurant, it's just that I would prefer not to. Today, after spending the afternoon at the beach, we ate at a roadside restaurant near Bouznika. It was really nice sitting outside at dusk. The meat at the restaurant was very fresh; it was still draining blood and hanging about ten feet away from our table. The feral cats really liked the restaurant, too, especially the bucket of bones, gristle, and intestines on the side. And I'm sure that if you asked all of the crows and flies, they would also give you a strong recommendation. I think that I should get major props for finishing my meal without gagging.

Street Vendors

Day 6
June 12th

Everything is still going well. I ventured my first snack from a street vendor—grilled corn! Delicious. I was a little wary when I first saw the carts that the vendors haul out onto the street of the medina at rush hour, around 6 pm. The carts are not very clean or sturdy looking and they roast the ears of corn over open coals, fanning them with a piece of dirty cardboard. After I bought mine, he asked if I wanted salt--of course I did--then he plunged the entire, blackened ear into a container of dirty salt water. But it was still good, burnt and salty!

I finally arranged my cell phone. I still had an international phone from France so I bought a new SIM card with Maroc Telecom. Sadly, I made some beginner's bargaining mistakes. I bought it from the first stall that I walked into and paid the full asking price. He named 50 dirhams and I was just so amazed that a SIM card could only cost $7 that I didn't even think of bargaining, especially for electronics. A fair price would have been 15 or 20 dirhams, around $2 or $3. Putain. The electronics that are available are amazing. You can find authentic ipods and iphones for about twice as much, but the fakes are the real bargain. A fake ipod video nano costs about 300 dirhams or $43. I have to wonder how well they work. You can also find any kind of fancy cell phone for the same price.

I am learning very quickly how and when to bargain. You can argue about the price anywhere where there aren't any prices listed, especially in the medina. And never, ever pay the first price that the vendor asks for! So far, I haven't had the same customer treatment as I had in Casablanca, where the shopkeeper would sit me down in the store and pull every single item off of the shelves in order to entice me. I actually made friends with Khaled, my connection in the Casablanca medina who supposedly gave me "prix d'ami" or a price for a friend and taught me some Berber words. But Casablanca's medina is much touristier. My friends and I spent a day being led on a wild goose chase through the whole medina in search of a wooden box and a pair of sequined shoes. We first ran into a shopkeeper who spoke English very well and then he just hustled us from one relative's shop to another's for a few hours. I never saw shoes that I actually liked but I did see all manner of leather goods and "magic" wooden boxes.

It is really cool to see what people hawk on the streets as well. Sunglasses, dress shirts, shoes, suits, band-aids, surgical gloves, pirated DVDs. Pirated DVDs cost about a dollar each, which is literally putting the movie theaters out of business. I can buy an entire season of Alias or 24 for mere dollars…my friend told me that Americans always go home with bags of DVDs.