Casablanca, Columbia, MO
March 9, 2010
When Casablanca moved from its Nifong location to near campus, we thought: new place for lunch. And it seemed, after watching the restaurant renovate an old dry cleaners, that much work would go in to creating a high quality Middle Eastern restaurant. Even with two other such restaurants, Columbia is the bastion of mediocrity. This town suffers from ethnicity. Not a lack of people, but a lack of quality so-called ethnic food. The challenge was there. Do just a bit better.
We ate dinner at Casablanca tonight. In fact, my wife has claim to being the first person to eat at the new setup. She showed up for lunch yesterday. They remembered her when we walked in.
When you see someone put what looks like a great deal of money into a renovation, you expect quality in return. After all, why spend at least six figures to serve average fare? And yet, average is what we got. The dishes came out in scattered order. The waitress, obviously new to this work, still wasn’t sure of what she was serving. And the food…..hot dolmas are ok. On a bed of rice, a bit too much. Still, the dolmas may have been the second best thing we ordered. The schwarma plate was served with the typical factory wedge pita you do your best to avoid at all costs. The place we sometimes ate at in Royal Oak served them in the plastic wrapper the factory ships them in. Tiny pieces of meat littered my plate. Tough and chewy. The lamb plate we ordered for my daughter came with four tough pieces of (maybe) shoulder that were spiced and grilled, but they needed to sit in a marinade for a day. My wife’s falafel was fine. Maybe the best thing we had. And the lamb soup….this was not soup. Maybe a jar of tomato soup with Barilla orzo and tiny tiny tiny pieces of lamb. Awful.
But here is the real enigma of this meal. After all this money, the interior decorating, the obvious effort to make a living….they serve frozen french fries. “Are these frozen?” I asked the waitress. “Let me check,” she said. She came back a minute later and confirmed my suspicions. If you are going to spend all this money to move and renovate, can you also buy bags of potatoes, a french fry cutter, and a deep fryer worth a damn? “It’s like a Gordon Ramsey moment,” my wife said. Cutting corners is a sure way to closing quickly.
And the pita? Before we discovered that La Shish was a terrorist supporter, we used to go to Dearborn to eat there. A big wood burning oven sat in the middle of the restaurant. A women made fresh pita. The pita came to your table steaming inside. Few things are more wonderful than fresh pita. I could buy a bag of ten for a dollar or so in the Carmel Market in Tel Aviv. I loved the smell of the warm bread. The taste of warmth.
Spend a little more money. Stop ordering cardboard from Chicago. Make your own pita. Don’t cut corners. Stay open a long time. Do better. Much, much better. In other words, Casablanca suffers from an identity problem. Or a lack of.
And then I will talk to you about dessert. I have ideas. You’ll need pistachios. Rose water. Honey. And a trip to Shatila bakery in Dearborn for pointers.
Posted in Uncategorized
March 10th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
We prefer to call it “Columbia Good” as opposed to mediocre. The sad part is that it will stay open despite the problems you describe above.
March 10th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
That’s sad. As you note, it’s often so easy to do simple thing right. We make fresh pitas at home regularly, and have not bought them for many, many years.
With such restaurants, I often wonder whether they are catering to a perceived market, or simply cutting corners? Were one to open a true, authentic ethnic restaurant of any sort in a market this size, with prices to match the quality, would it succeed? Are such owners calculating that more customers will be comfortable with food close to that they can get from the grocery store or an airport kiosk, and thus reach a more comfortable margin of success? Truly authentic can be a challenge to convince people of, even if it is very good by the standards of authenticity. I think Italian food in Columbia suffers from the assumptions that most of the market wants American-Italian, not true Italian, and so it is not perceived to be worth it to go the extra distance and price to get it right.
I’m reminded of a fitting piece from The Onion, harshly satirizing the situation I’m describing: Restaurant turns out to be Spanish, not Mexican. There are already many fine restaurants in Columbia catering to the upper end of foodie-dom; I wonder how many more can be expected to open or succeed?
Or, perhaps, the owners really are just poor cooks or corner-cutters and I’m reading too much into this. It’s a question I ponder often, though.
March 10th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
These are good questions, Eric. When I asked if the french fries were frozen, I could hear the waitress ask the owner/manager (?) and he responded, without shame, frozen. Such a small item, yet symbolic of a larger issue. I can’t imagine the cost of actually cooking potatoes is so much greater than buying Sysco frozen. The taste is significantly different. Whether it is cost cutting or appealing to yet another lowest common denominator is difficult to tell. A hodge-podge of Middle Eastern/Greek/Turkish doesn’t bother me (I don’t ask for authentic Yemenite food), but freshness does. That’s why we call it a Gordon Ramsey moment. On both versions of Kitchen Nightmares, Ramsey goes to a chosen restaurant struggling, sees that they don’t use fresh food (one place uses frozen fish despite its location near the coast!) and shows the difference.
April 12th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Wow. That was a brutal evaluation of a decent restaurant. Ofcourse Casablanca isn’t perfect and I’m really not a a frequent patron of the restaurant But when you question the authenticity of the food, the owners are actually from Libya which has a highly similar cuisine to Morocco. You mentioned Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, what in the world does Israel have to do with North African cuisine? It’s like comparing apples and oranges. I agree they could do more as far as the French fries and such, but we should be encouraging more ethnic restaurants in Columbia. Maybe if customers can offer some constructive criticism to the owners directly, these problems could be rectified. From the above article, I didn’t hear any MAJOR problems that could not be fixed. If we want the quality level of restaurants in the Columbia area to improve, we have to be proactive and share our thoughts with the owners instead of resorting to destructive criticism which will inevitably lead to less customer patronage and the replacement of these borderline ethnic restaurants with a Dairy Queen or Hardees.
April 18th, 2010 at 11:06 am
I have to strongly agree with Steven on two major points. One: Tel Aviv has little-to-nothing in common with Morocco. Two: If you want “ethnic” food to have a presence in Columbia, then support these businesses with constructive criticism to owners instead of tearing them down behind the owners’ backs.
April 18th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Folks, the comment was about pita bread. But if you want to make the Tel Aviv connection to North African food, the majority of Sephardic Israelis are Moroccan. Israeli cuisine is based on North African cuisine. That wasn’t my point, but I’ll make it now. Second, I will gladly support any local restaurant that doesn’t insult its customers by offering frozen french fries and cardboard pita. A restaurant that wants my money needs to deliver the goods. Look around Columbia, and you will find places delivering fresh food at good prices. Deliver fresh food and you won’t get criticized for offering frozen in its place.