11 June 2007

The Picture

If there are any regular readers of The Dinner Hour, it's possible you were as surprised as I was to see the picture now on the "flag" of my blog. Seth did some redesign.
Well, it is me in the pic. I'm at some roadside gas station/restaurant in Morocco. Where, exactly, I do not know except to say that it is somewhere in the northwestern part of the country. It was one of many fabulous experiences in the country. You ordered your meat by weight and cut from the butcher. He then slides it through a window to an open kitchen bustling with cooks working over hot grills.
We took shelter in some shade seated at pleasant outdoor tables. After a short wait, a young man brought us a fresh ground meatball tagine with bread and small bowls of ground cumin in place of our traditional black pepper. It was our first of several great meals at small roadside restaurants in Morocco. For those of you unsettled by the photo, name the last place you ate where butchers worked so closely with cooks, the freshness of meat was so important and you could watch it all.