The Moroccan Soup Bar isn’t really a bar, and I’ve never seen anyone eating soup there. Nevertheless, with its verbal menu and widely lauded chickpea bake, it remains one of my girlfriend’s favourite places to eat and a sentimental favourite of my own. It was here, after all, that she and I ate one of our very first meals together, and where we held a marvellous birthday celebration for her earlier this year. Twelve of us piled in around that big front table by the window, where we were treated to all manner of interesting-looking dishes that we hadn’t seen on previous visits. The restaurant put on the kind of spread you don’t easily or quickly forget, and don’t want to.
This was to be my fourth time at the restaurant and it was only natural to expect that I would leave gushing with praise and adoration. After all, the place has a lot going for it: it’s fun, it’s cheap, its owner is a character, and it has a killer signature dish in the aforementioned chickpea bake. So I was surprised when the evening’s all-too-rushed visit failed to live up to expectations: we were ushered in and out within the hour; we had to ask for water (twice) and had to help ourselves to serviettes; and we were (I thought) unduly subjected to the political opinions of the owner (opinions that we agreed with, sure, though that seemed of little consequence at the time). And the food—including the chickpea bake—while good, was hardly the best it had ever been; nor was it enough to justify the feeling that we were merely mouths to be fed and got rid of, much like animals at a trough. The timing would have been perfect if we had been going to see a show. But we weren’t.
But at least we didn’t leave hungry, either, and I suppose that’s the entire point; the food—filling, hearty vegetarian fare—is what matters here, not the service. Standalone dishes are available, but the three-course banquet seems to be the popular favourite. A steal a $17.50, it comes out in multi-plate instalments: an appetiser-cum-entrée of dips, mixed olives, cold vegetables and pide; a collection of miscellaneous mains to share, which you haphazardly help yourself to with spoons and return to as your stomach sees fit; and coffee and dessert.
I personally have a tendency to overload on the first course: I’m a fiend for bread, a sucker for antipasto platters, and never so much dip as drown. Always the first to start and the last to realise there’s more to come, I simply lack the willpower to stop when it comes to this sort of food, even when it’s nothing remarkable. Admittedly, the platter here is better than those of similar establishments; last time I ate at Lentil As Anything at the Abbotsford Convent, for example, their potatoes smelt and tasted like smoke. (We certainly paid what we felt that night.)
The mains are served in non-matching bowls which the five of us pass around over the top of one another until everyone’s got a bit of everything. A wet-ish curry of cauliflower florets rubs shoulders with grilled vegetables and couscous; two slices of eggplant, sitting atop a brilliantly red mound of tomato-flavoured rice, are shadowed by two large scoops of yogurt. Everywhere you look there seems to be another type—and colour—of rice, and the gradual combination of the various dishes in one’s little white bowl makes it increasingly difficult to differentiate all the flavours from one another. It’s fun.
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At the centre of it all is the legendary chickpea bake, which my girlfriend would probably leave me for if the opportunity ever presented itself. I wouldn’t blame (or put it past) her: the chickpea bake is very good. While I personally feel that the flavour of yogurt is sometimes a little overpowering, there’s no denying that, texturally speaking, the dish is up there with the best of them. The creamy smoothness of yogurt and tahini is countered by the unexpected crunch of toasted pide; a large handful of chickpeas and an upper-crust of slivered almonds, toasted brown, adds to the complex feel of the dish in your mouth. The resulting fervour of its fans speaks for itself: if I can’t help myself with dips, then no one can help themselves with chickpea bake. It’s the first thing everyone goes for when it comes out and their first port of call when they go back for seconds. It’s the dish you remember most vividly afterwards. Even now, as I write, I can taste it.
A nutty Middle Eastern coffee is poured at the table into little cups. We sip it slowly, in part to make up for the absurdly short amount of time that it took for our plates to be cleared and our desserts to arrive. A small white plate of Middle Eastern pastries demands to be divided five ways, no matter how finicky or messy the process is of cutting them up with a butter knife. The highlight is a small, not-too-sticky piece of baklava, flecked with little bits of pistachio and filled with a nutty meal of some kind. It compliments and is complemented by the thimbleful of coffee.
But then we’re out on the footpath before I even know what’s happening, and everybody’s climbing into cars and going home. I, meanwhile, am left cradling my jacket, which I was not given the chance to put on before our table was cleared and the next group of five ushered in and deposited at it, and if you were to see me standing alone in the drizzle you’d say I was probably either upset or just plain confused, or perhaps both, which would be accurate. But at least I can say that I didn’t leave hungry. And that’s the entire point. I’ll get over it.
The Scene, 17 May 2007
