My birthday dinner at a wonderfully dark and greasy Gaststube was gulash, Austrian-style: hunks of sauced meat with a knodel the size of a large child's head, two hot dogs sliced to resemble squiggly squid legs, a leathery fried egg AND a pickle, sliced to resemble the hot dogs. It was glorious. Next day: Schnitzel, Wiener Art. Duh. And on the third day, us kids tested our blood pressures and gasped, and thus ran scrambling for the nearest non-central European eatery we could find.
Which turned out to be Moh's. Like a divining rod, John has a nose for lamb. (I, admittedly, may have a nose for knodel. But even I get over-doughed.) Collectively we have a soft-spot for seemingly ignored eateries with old dudes out front clicking worry beads and sipping tea. It's usually a good sign of a family joint that the real ethnic locals (of which there are five) like; or, it's a front for something unsavory, which makes it even cooler. (Which, we later learn as we lugged our large clay cooker home, Moh's is a very tasty front for tajines.)There was instant bonding, as we shared similar credentials. We haltingly explained the 'wandering Americans-living in Berlin-speaking shite German and French' side, while he traced his path as a wandering Moroccan living in Vienna, by way of Munich and a handful of other European capitals. We drank more wine, Moroccan wine, styled like a southern Rhone (one of the few benefits of French colonialism, I suppose.) Somehow I ended up with the bottle. Our dish of lamb tajine was spicy, as soft as butter and gone in a half-second. I might have licked the clay dish; there was a small fork-fight over the last dried plum. And then we rested, and that's when Moh brought out the goods.
A savvy businessman knows his timing. And there is no better bait than a postprandial, drunken bear (or tourist, or Berlin resident who is simply out of ideas for those damn ancient, crusty chickens from Extra.) We couldn't even haggle, if that was something we could have even managed with our limited German (we are useless at the Mauer Flohmarkt.) It was a done deal.
So a week later the tajine has been put to good use. Chicken wings with dried apricots and cinnamon. A lamb roast with an illegal amount of garlic. And this morning, chewy Ciabatta-styled bread. Now, if we could just turn up the thermostat and get out the dancing girls, we'd have ourselves a real medina.
