El Marrakesh

• The El Marrakesh has just the gaudy decor you want in a Moroccan restaurant. On the walls are photos of notables who (I assume) have eaten threr or who are friends of the family that owns the place.
• If you eat a full hotel breakfast I advise eating nothing else the day you go there for dinner.
• The host will greet you with a choice of arak or sweek vermouth. Soon little dishes of salads cover the giant round coppery tray that serves as a table. The thin slices of eggplant are excellent, and so is everything else: kholrabi, cucumbers, dressed spinach, tiny sweet tomatoes in chopped onion dressing, delicious humus, red bell peppers done in a way I've tried to copy without success, beets, and five or six others.
• Next come hot appetizers: potato pastilles and triangles, stuffed grape leaves, and chicken with nuts in pastry. Pace yourself.
• The main dishes come with couscous and steamed vegetables.
• Afterwards they bring sesame pastries, pears with chocolate and honey, and hot mint tea sweetened the way it should be at an Eastern meal, poured from a decorated metal teapot into small painted glasses..
• During our meal yesterday, friends and relatives of the host wandered in and out.
• El Marrakesh is on King David Street, right across from the David's Citadel Hotel, about a block from the King Davit, and a five-minute walk from Kikar Tsion or from the Jaffa Gate. It's expensive for Jerusalem. The meal, with two large glasses of wine and a generous tip came to about 100 USD.

Copyright 2006 Jane S. Fox