A TASTE TOUR OF MOROCCO

Koutoubia, 2116 Westwood Blvd., West Los Angeles, (213) 475-0729. Beer and wine. Street parking. Dinner only, Tuesday-Sunday. All major credit cards accepted. Dinner for two, food only, $30-$50.

There I was in Marseille, having a perfectly satisfying meal when the man at the next table leaned over and said abruptly, “You ordered all wrong.”

“But I like fish soup,” I was saying before it occured to me that my meal was none of his business. The man shook his head impatiently. “No,” he said firmly, “in this restaurant you must order the sardines in oil and then the daurade baked in salt. They are the only things to eat.” Taking a clean fork, he handed some sardines across the table. They were delicious. “Bring her some,” he said imperiously to the waiter.

Before long the waiter was bringing me some of the fish as well. It turned out that I was drinking the wrong wine; the waiter removed the offending beverage and brought me a new glass. The next thing I knew, a salad had appeared, followed by a dish of the restaurant’s famous mousse.

“Americans!” sighed the stranger, shaking his head. “How do they survive?”

When my benefactor learned that I lived in Los Angeles, his fears for my future abated. “My nephew has a restaurant there!” he exclaimed with delight. “You must go as soon as you return. Michel will see that you eat very, very well.”

I did not, I admit, rush right over. Wonderful as the meal had been, I have always treasured the ability to select my own food. I was even less pressed when I discovered that the nephew’s restaurant was Moroccan. I once consumed seven Moroccan meals in a single week, and since then my enthusiasm for the standard restaurant repertoire--couscous, lamb with prunes and honey, the ubiquitous bastilla-- has been seriously diminished. But the more I thought about the meal in Marseille, the more I wondered what the nephew could be cooking to earn his uncle’s admiration.

And so here I am in a room that looks as if it were plucked from the middle of the Sahara Desert, reclining on a cushion while warm water is poured over my hands. The walls are lined with carpets, cushions are scattered about, music fills the air. A man in a djellaba seats himself companionably on a hassock by the table. “Forget about the menu,” he says. “We must plan your meal.” It is instantly clear that the nephew has just appeared.

Never have I heard food discussed with such pleasure. “We could begin with chatchouka, “ he says, launching into a mouthwatering description of eggplant with peppers and olive oil and tomatoes. “Then, if you’d care to try them, I have been marinating some shrimp in coriander and paprika . . . “ he continues, reeling off a breathtaking series of dishes. There are oxtails with cumin and chickpeas, lamb with pink olives, seabass with roasted chiles; clearly this is far from standard fare.

“Will you leave it to me?” asks Michel Ohayon. He pours a glass of wine (there is a nice little wine list), and departs into the mysterious recesses of his restaurant.

Soon he is back carrying a plate filled with Moroccan salads. There are marinated carrots tasting strongly of cumin, tangy fresh beets, a chopped cucumber, tomato and onion concoction. There are velvety roasted peppers laden with lemon and garlic. But most of all there is the incredibly fragrant eggplant blended with peppers and olive oil and tomatoes. We scoop this up with anise-sprinkled bread, which is toothy on the outside, chewy within. It is all seductively delicious.

Next Ohayon appears with some lean sausage of his own making, delicate duck and chicken threaded with mint. This has been sliced into thick ovals and arranged on leaves of butter lettuce. Rolled up with some of the accompanying hot pepper relish, it makes a delightfully spicy little package. Now he appears with a tiny tajine (the conical covered dish in which Moroccans make their stews); he removes the top to reveal four little shrimp, perfectly cooked and perfumed with spices, glistening on a bed of rice. On the side are crisp buttery sticks of carrots and zucchini.

Will we try some bastilla? Why not? We tear into the hot little packages of pastry with our fingers, savoring the paper-thin flakes of crust, the sweet cinnamon-sprinkled chicken, the almonds that make this dish so seductive. This is a particular treat, like eating dessert in the middle of the meal.

Here in this ornately exotic room the meal has turned into a dreamlike sequence, one delicious dish following another. With Ohayon running in and out of the kitchen I do not feel that I am in a restaurant, but in the home of a particularly solicitous host. Each time he suggests a new dish I have the feeling it would be rude to refuse. And each dish is so good. . . .

Now he is bringing out brains, which float like light clouds in a deep green sauce of coriander sparked with lemon and cumin; they are as delicate, as delicious as any I have eaten. Then there is an autumn lamb dish, the meat stewed with fresh fennel and saffron, cooked until it falls from the bone in tender chunks. The flavors have mingled until each ingredient has surrendered its taste to the others; there is a rollicking harmony about the dish.

“Did you like it?” asks Ohayon when we have finally stopped eating. He seats himself again at the table, basking in our pleasure. I ask if he is the cook and he nods, talking of trips to the market, preserving his own lemons for a chicken dish, curing his own olives. “I do the cooking in the afternoons. Most of the dishes are slow-cooked or marinated, so there is no problem.”

And now it is his turn to ask questions. “How did you hear about us?” he wants to know. I mention his uncle in Marseille. Ohayon laughs.

And then, without missing a beat, he informs me that I am going to eat one of the honey-drenched pastries for dessert.