El Bahia

37 Wicklow Street, Dublin 2
www.elbahia.com

Aoife managed to score us a couple of VIP invites to a book launch – The Dubliner’s 100 Best Bars 2007 – and so we trooped up the steps of the Odeon about 18:00. Joint half empty. Four glasses of white wine each later, and the place was black. Oh yeah, would have been about 18:45 by then. Anyway, having managed to listen to one of the worst speakers in the world, helping to launch the guide, and being fairly stunned that most of the “best bars” seemed to be tumbledown dives haunted by alcoholics pretending to be artists, we nicked five copies of the book, and set off down Harcourt Street. Totally forgetting my bag, containing a small fortune worth of Louis Feraud. Luckily, Aoife had shoved it down the back of a couch earlier on, and with the Odeon populus becoming progressively/ regressively drunker on the free booze, there was little chance anyone would spot it and make off with it. I picked it up the next evening – props to the staff at the Odeon who salvaged it for me. Sometimes you get to see that Dublin isn’t gone as nasty as I’d normally have you believe.

So, back to that walk down towards the Green. We were both in the mood for something good but easy to enjoy – so we hit on Moroccan to fulfil both criteria. I had often passed by the doorway of a restaurant, situated on Clarendon Street near the junction with Wicklow Street, and thought about recreating my experiences of Souk in London, which I had visited so often with Nabil and William in recent times. There’s a small, narrow, red-hued staircase that you climb two storeys to reach the restaurant floor of El Bahia. It’s a bit like climbing up an oesophagus, waiting to inhale once you reach the top. We were greeted on the landing by a waiter, who took our coats and bags (the ones we had managed not to lose so far), and were shown into the dining room. There wouldn’t have been more than about 10 tables max in this space, and only one of them was occupied (by a young Israeli couple). North African music was playing softly, and the dining room walls were decorated in purples, reds and golds, as if someone had asked Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen to redecorate a box room as a Maghrebin brothel. Obviously, we both felt at home.

We decided to skip the starters, it being a Wednesday night and there being no guarantee of the speed of service. From a main course menu divided helpfully into tagine, bastilla, cous cous and (somewhat incongruously) fish sections, I chose an Elham Bi Tmar (a tagine of lamb and figs in a date sauce), and ordered cous cous as an accompaniment; Aoife went for the Tangier Cous Cous (described on the menu as “mouth-watering chicken cooked in a sweet sauce with sultana, onion and chic peas”).

Confounding our earlier fears, both dishes arrived together after a delay of no more than ten minutes, during which time we necked two Casablanca beers (of Moroccan origin, but brewed and bottled in the UK). The portions were more than respectable, Aoife’s cous cous being served alongside a generous helping of chicken and sultanas, with perhaps an overly-liberal serving of chick peas. My own choice came served in the traditional tagine earthenware dish and funnel, accompanied by the requested base of bulgar wheat. The lamb was tender and flavourful, and perfectly complemented by the sweetness of the fruits. Cous cous tends to swell the stomach quickly, so we were both fairly full by the time the surface of our plates began to show beneath the food; ah yes, satisfaction, thy name is bloating.

El Bahia is definitely an establishment worthy of repeat visits. Food is excellent, décor is exotic yet tranquil, and on a Wednesday night, it’s a perfect place for a pair of KGB agents, or a couple in an illicit affair, to share a bowl of cous cous and merguez and a few Moroccan beers, safe in the knowledge they’ll never be traced or disturbed.

A final note of appreciation goes to our waiter, who chased down the stairs after us to return the mobile I’d left on the table; whatever the opposite of kleptomania is, I certainly had it that night. All I seemed to hang on to was a memory of a delicious dinner with great company, and – sorry for ruining it for the spies and the adulterers - the need to publicise a great little restaurant that deserves not to be overlooked.

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The Damage (EUR)
Mains

• 18.50 Elham Bi Tmar Tagine
  
• 17.00 Tangier Cous Cous
  

Drinks

• 10.00 Casablanca Beers (*2)

Service 6.00
Total 51.50
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The Score
4.5 Food and Drink
4.5 Service
4.0 Décor
3.5 Ambience
4.0 Value
4.0 Overall