Niya Bajaj

Webitor’s Note: Café Moroc is a participant in this year’s Winterlicious, a culinary festival held each winter.  This year, 130 Toronto area restaurants are participating, with a variety of different cuisines, reflecting the vast cultures of the city.  Menus are prix fixe, and run $15 or $20 for lunch and $25 or $35 for dinner.  Winterlicious runs from January 25, 2008 to February 7, 2008.  For more information on Winterlicious and a list of Winterlicious participating restaurants, please visit the WinterCity2008 website.  The summer counterpart of Winterlicious, called Summerlicious, will occur in July.  During Winterlicious, lunch at Café Moroc is $15 and dinner is $25.

Café Moroc shares its space the Sultan’s Tent, a lavish space decorated to mimic a harem with silk hangings and belly dancers. It’s graphically dense website suggests a decadent opulence which makes the restaurants’ lack of street presence confounding at best. The website suggests pennants, lights, and big heavy doors, but if you haven’t been there once already the place can be difficult to locate. However, once you’ve managed to find it the Café Moroc puts on a rather stellar gastronomic performance.

Service at the Café is friendly and conversational if a bit rushed during peak periods and wait times can be long. To whet our appetites we started with piquant pomo martinis. These girly pink drinks are far stronger than they look and fragrantly decadent.

We followed our cocktails with Sliced Smoked Duck Breast Salad and the Maftoul. The salad was composed of an artful little tangle of baby lettuces, sections of buttery mango; tart cherry tomatoes tossed with an acerbic vinaigrette and topped slices of wonderfully gamey duck breast. The Maftoul, described on the menu as “Hand roll Moroccan Cigars” see crisp filo sheets embracing a succulent mélange of ground beef, chopped cashews and raisins, kissed with cinnamon. The cigars are laced with a chipotle aioli that adds a wonderful creaminess to the flaky, spicy, heavenly appetizer. I would return for these and the cocktails alone.

Entrées at Café Moroc are less delicate, indeed the portions are gargantuan, almost as if they are trying to make up in size what they lack in seasoning. Both the Moroccan Beef Ribs and the Braised Lamb come in brontosaurus sized portions, looking like something Fred Flintstone might have trundled home. Both come with starchy sides, sweet potato mash with the beef and couscous with the lamb. The notable lack of seasoning however, took a great deal away from the meal. The advertised “rich prune demi glace” that accompanied the lamb was more of a brown gravy that did not taste identifiably of meat, much less prune. The beef suffered same situation.

Dessert however proved a saving grace since the Café Moroc executes a perfect crème brulée. The top is caramelized to a beautiful crunch, though lacking the advertised pistachios. Beneath it, the silken custard is redolent of vanilla. Stay away however from the Moroccan treats plate that is made up of slightly stale cookies and a rather fibrous slice of orange.

Thus while the gargantuan entrées are stodgy at best, the Café Moroc is well worth a repeat visit if only for cocktails, cigars, and crème brulée.

Café Moroc, 49 Front Street East, Toronto.  Phone: 416-961-0601