SNACK CHAMALI
So tonight I had a little adventure, in retrospect a very little adventure, but at the time I didn’t know what I was getting into and so at first it seemed like a big adventure.
I decided to go to Snack Chamali, the favorite restaurant of the the woman who wrote “Where to eat in Essaouira.” I found it on GPS, a little over half a mile from my Airbnb. Instead of heading along the wall of the fort along the tourist filled streets to the central square, I went along the wall in the other direction. And almost immediately I stopped seeing tourists, in fact I didn’t see a single white face. There were also no tourist shops, just ordinary businesses and then after a little while there was almost no one in the streets and I came to a long section of auto repair shops, one after another with junked cars on the sidewalk in front of them. There were no restaurants or stores of any kind. It was getting dark and a little eerie. Finally I got near where the restaurant was supposed to be, but there was no sign of Snack Chamali anywhere. At that point Susie called me on Facetime to check in. I showed her the dark street with no signs of life. She advised me to get a Petit Taxi back to the Airbnb because she thought the place looked sketchy. Finally with her still on the phone I went into what appeared to be a bus station where there were a few people. I mentioned the name of the restaurant to a man behind a desk. He had no idea what I was talking about and went to get a boy who spoke some English. Chamali, Chamali, I repeated. And finally his face brightened. Chameli, he said. He pointed to a dingy set of tables through a dirty glass window. There is was, seedy and dimly lit, with no identifying sign outside at all (yet they have a web page).
So I went in and asked if they had Chicken Tangine. No chicken, he said. There seemed to be one Tangine left, he lifted the orange lid shaped like a pointed hat. There was some kind of meat inside and I nodded my head with enthusiasm. I sat at small plastic covered table. He was apparently heating it up. When he brought it to me the meat was covered with French fries.
It turned out, just as the woman said, to be the tastiest meal I have had in Essaouira. The meat, it was chicken I finally realized, fell off the bone. There were tomatoes and many olives with seeds and a well spiced sauce, all of which went well with the French fries and a basket of bread. On the bottom of the clay dish there were caramelized onions that I scraped off, delicious.
I ate slowly, enjoying every bite. It was 30 dirhan, $3. I thanked him profusely, more with my enthusiasm than my English which he didn’t understand. And then I walked part of the way home, no longer feeling that the streets were eerie, saw a Petit taxi and got a ride to the Medina and felt really good after having had a very pleasant evening. I’ll go back, several times, but at noon when there will be more choice of dishes and the streets will be brighter.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 