Another Fine Moment We've Gotten Us Into!

 We selected the restaurant because we’d been here on our last trip in 2014. It is just outside Bab Rcif, one of the 14 babs or gates to the Fez medina. I remember sitting on the terrace above the street three years ago and watching the scene below us: a busy square, the last stop for taxis (les petit taxi, the little red ones that are allowed to carry passengers around Fez) before the medina, which is, after all, a pedestrian, donkey, hand-cart, and annoying motor scooter zone. We sat, tranquil, while below us taxis, pedestrians, bicycles, motorcycles, annoying motor scooters, private cars, and the occasional giant bus came through and maneuvered around one another. It was quite a show. I still remember this is where I saw that guy in the djellaba with the yellow slippers I admired so much. (I still want to buy a pair of those, although I have no idea where I would wear them!)

The photo that started my obsession with yellow slippers. I like the djellaba, too!

The square today in a quiet moment

Today we were sitting at the table we’d sat at three years ago, and watching the same scene below. We ordered a pizza (this is a nice restaurant, but not a cheap one, and pizza fit our appetites and budget at the moment). Eventually it came, and we very much enjoyed it, until we started counting our money to pay. Uh oh, we were coming up short. We owed about US $10 for our lunch, but were missing almost a dollar. And nobody in Morocco takes credit cards. Oh well, nothing to do but explain, and beg for mercy.

Click here for video if the above link doesn't work!

Down at the cash register we did explain, as I pushed all our money, including a handful of coins, towards the cashier. They (the cashier, his helper, and our waiter) sorted through the coins, said we owed them 45Dh (US$4.50). Come back tonight and pay the rest, they said. Or tomorrow is fine, too.

The waiter handed me the rest of the coins (about US$4 worth) and said, Take this in case you want to get something on the way home. We were stunned, and ever so grateful. I gave the waiter a 10 Dh tip (when we ordered he had established that tipping and the service charge were entirely at our discretion), and we were on our way, relieved and more than a little embarrassed.

PS: We came back the next day and paid our debt. The cashier seemed neither surprised nor relieved. Entertained, I think would describe it…

The fabled Bab Boujloud, the Blue Gate

          Restaurant Row

We’re at a different restaurant this time, closer to home. It’s on what I call restaurant row, a series of eating places just around the corner from the Bab Boujloud, the famed Blue Gate. These restaurants consist of several tables in the street, and a room or two in the adjacent building for the kitchen. Touts* work the pedestrian walk, inviting in passers-by and expressing great disappointment when turned down. We’ve been here several times already, and everyone in the restaurant (touts, waiters, and the ladies who cook) recognizes us. We like to think that as repeat customers we get preferential treatment (which may actually be true, but then, everybody is treated pretty well so it’s hard to tell).

*Tout: a person soliciting custom or business, typically in an aggressive or bold manner

A busy restaurant scene, just past the Bab Boujloud

Our waiter, scanning for potential customers. He always takes good care of us!

We order – chicken skewers for me, an omelet for Paula, 40 Dh (US$4) each. Plus a bottle of water (another 10 Dh, if that matters). We are soon served our water (and olives, and a tiny bowl of incredibly flavorful lentils, or something similar). As we sip our water we see the cook arrive with a bag of eggs from the “market” (in one sense, the entire medina is a market, but eggs are sold about five minutes away). Paula comments that earlier she saw someone bringing in our bottle of water.

We wait for our lunch, and I began to think about this “just in time” inventory system. I’m sure eating places like this one have used such a system for thousands of years: the customer orders something, you send the boy out to buy the ingredients and cook them up immediately. Reduces storage space; no refrigeration needed. Humm, it seems it took modern industry a long time to catch up on that one!

As we wait and wait, I consider this some more. We joke about them killing the chicken for my skewers, and I begin to worry about the “girls” around the corner. Every day we pass through a very busy fresh produce and meat selling area of the medina, where I always stop to check on the half-dozen or so live chickens, waiting patiently on top of their cages. Will they all be there when I pass by again? I should have thought of that before I ordered chicken!

Chez Rachid, our preferred restaurant; one of about six along here.

We still wait. Slow service today. We realize it is Spring Break; many of the passers-by are young students. We’re asked to change tables: they have a party of six, all Spanish students. No problem, we move. Paula comments that even though all the tables are full (we count seven tables), the tout is still out there, extoling the virtues of his restaurant. I am reminded of Jordan Belfort, Leonard DiCaprio’s character in Wolf of Wall Street. Belfort prided himself on his ability to sell securities (many of dubious value), and every refusal was for him a personal failure. In the same way, our tout/waiter took seriously every refusal to accept his invitation to sit and eat. What exactly, I wonder, is his relationship to this restaurant? Employee, owner? The cook’s second cousin? How important to the overall success of the business is it to squeeze in one more diner? Just another indication that there is a whole world here about which we know nothing!

Eventually we got our lunch; as usual it was quite good, and not expensive. On the way back home we pass the chicken seller. I am relieved to see that “my” six (do we call that a “cluck” of chickens?) are all still there. But maybe next time I’ll order the omelet, too.

Oh, good!"The girls" are still all here! Paula buys fresh produce.

       New this time around: a travel map! It's interactive, poke around. See where we've been, and where we will be going.
I've been working on this for quite a while, but only now figured out how to link to it (I really wanted to embed it in this blog but my lifetime is finite and some things just don't seem worth spending too much of it on).


                  See if clicking here will take you to the map...