Where You’re Sure to Get a Bellyful

The belly dancer wriggled into the room in a clamor of tinkling finger cymbals. “Gosh, this makes me think of my mom,” said one of my guests. I suppose that’s the curse of being a belly dance teacher’s daughter.

For most of us, though, belly dancing probably suggests Middle Eastern nightclubs or restaurants. Americans will always love any place where you get to recline on pillows and eat with your fingers. Throw in a belly dancer and the Moroccan hand-washing ceremony, and you’ve got a party.

On Friday and Saturday, Mamounia in Beverly Hills really jumps. It’s a smallish room with just eight or 10 tables, so instead of dancing on a stage or among a lot of tables, the dancer works on a narrow dance floor close to everybody, and the result is less like a show than an exuberant private party. In fact, it’s a little like a party in a Middle Eastern home when the boys in the family have decided to pick up the oud and drum and cajole baby sister into dancing for the guests in her street clothes (not that this is street-clothes belly dancing; the dancer is skilled and definitely goes through her share of costume changes during the evening).

Altogether, Mamounia is a distinctly homey place. It has its share of Moroccan decor--brass lamps, antique wood panels, a low wall of ornamental wrought iron, a triangular mirror shaped like a Berber clasp. You sit on low benches covered with red rugs and pillows, where the wall is lined with more rugs to about head level. There’s a tiny, closet-like semiprivate room, entered though an arch-topped doorway and covered with rugs stapled to the walls.

For a Moroccan restaurant, it’s distinctly easygoing and low-key. The meal (there’s no menu) is a multi-course affair with a choice of no more than three or four main dishes, which always seem to include the universal favorites lemon chicken and honey lamb.

You start, as usual in our Moroccan restaurants, with a slightly spicy lentil soup called harira . It’s like a smooth-textured, somewhat bland minestrone, and definitely needs the lemon wedge it’s served with. Around the same time you get a basket of very fresh, slightly crunchy bread baked on the premises.

The next course, a platter of salads, is your first opportunity to eat with your fingers. The cucumber salad is rather plain and the boiled carrots pretty simple too, but the eggplant salad is like a rich, concentrated Italian caponata . I’ve had it sprinkled with both black and green olives, and the black olives were particularly meaty.

Then comes a small bestila , the sugar-sprinkled filo pie filled with chicken and nuts. The nuts tasted oddly like peanuts to me, but the waiter assured me they were a mix of toasted walnuts and almonds. Unlike a lot of Moroccan restaurants, Mamounia doesn’t serve its bestila so hot that you burn your fingers on it.

Also unlike some Moroccan restaurants, Mamounia doesn’t require everybody at the table to order the same entree. Usually the favorite is honey lamb ( mrouzia --chunks of flavorful, slightly gamy lamb braised with honey, raisins and prunes until very tender. Mrouzia is so attractive that it’s odd to think that in the Middle Ages, it wasn’t just a dish of North Africa--it was eaten all across the Arab world and clear up to Turkmenistan in Central Asia, where it originated. How could it have died out?

Mamounia’s version of lemon chicken is tender, flavorful and attractive too, but not very typical--there are hardly any olives and very little pickled lemon in it. The effect is more of chicken than of any flavorings, though there is an odd taste like bacon.

There’s likely to be a kebab of one kind or another. I’ve had shrimp kebab--two skewers of shrimp, skewered lengthwise--and quail kebab. Too often quail is dry and rather dull, but here it’s moist and subtly spiced with cumin.

Dessert is always baklava, unusually long and skinny pieces and very crisp, filled with the same nuts as the bestila , followed by a bowl of wholesome fruit, which everybody’s usually too full to touch.

This is a very pleasant place that Beverly Hills seems barely aware of--it’s just north of Wilshire Boulevard on a stretch of Robertson Boulevard without many businesses. But it’s worth checking out, even on a weeknight when it’s just a Moroccan restaurant, not a belly dance party.

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Mamounia, 132 N. Robertson Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 360-7535. Dinner 5:30-11 p.m. daily. Beer and wine. Valet and street parking. All major cards. Dinner for two, $37-$54. What to Get: honey lamb, lemon chicken, quail kebab.