Location: Mama Ti Lee, a derb off rue Riad Zitoun El Jdid, just slightly to the south of Le Clos. We were worried about finding it at night, but a boy somehow divined our goal and led us there.
Edibles: three-course prix fixe, details below
Musings: Negotiating Marrakech's medina at night can be tricky and a little scary. Mama Ti Lee, like our riad and Dar Cherifa, is in a derb - a little neighborhood of about ten to twenty buildings that all lead into a dead-end alley. There are only a few sporadic streetlights in the derbs, and they are also pretty deserted - two corners and you can be all by yourself, even if the main street you turned off is very well-traveled. And maps are no help - even the most detailed map we had showed a few street names, with lots and lots of unnamed paths with multiple little crooks branching off them.
I guess Mama Ti Lee is the only tourist destination in the immediate area, because a pre-teen boy figured out where we were going and started leading us there, almost before we understood what was happening. There was a bit of a nervous moment at the restaurant when I handed him a tip, and he insisted on getting more. We ended up giving him the equivalent of about three dollars, but he still looked a bit disgruntled. (We wondered if he might still be hanging around when we were done with dinner, maybe with a few friends for extra persuasion.... but no, we left the restaurant and found our way back to the riad without incident.)
And now, the restaurant.
Mama Ti Lee serves modern Moroccan cuisine. [Postscript: Which, in the grand scheme of the trip, ended up being quite refreshing and novel. We didn't eat anything comparable for the rest of our visit.] Based on the food and stark, industrial décor, Mama Ti Lee would fit right in in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. The menu is very small. The prix fixe is three courses for 210 dirham (about $25), and there are two choices per course. That's it. Mama Ti Li does not serve alcohol.
Winnie and I got one of each dish, and here's how it went:
We were first served an amuse bouche of cheese madeleines with cherry tomatoes. I thought the texture was a bit rubbery, but the flavor was good.
The first course was roasted tomato tart, with arugula and honey-balsamic dressing...
... and eggplant "caviar" with ricotta, confit garlic and fig. (By the way, let me just say how nice it was to go from Spanish to French, and to be able to decipher menus and order precisely. My conversational French is fair to middling, but my food French is *excellent.*)
For me, the eggplant was the superior dish. Really nice textures and flavors. The tomato tart was fine, but the pastry was a bit tough.
The second course was rouget with tapenade and potato purée...
... and deep-fried cigars of shredded lamb shoulder in pastilla dough, with apricots, nuts, salad and cumin yogurt. I preferred the lamb to the rouget, but both were excellent. There's something about the savory-sweet balance in Moroccan cuisine that I'm really liking. It doesn't ever overpower the protein or make it taste dessert-like; rather, it's a fantastic added dimension of richness and body to the flavors.
Dessert was a coffee and white chocolate tart...
... and a parfait of orange gélee, orange blossom cream and streusel topping.
This course needs work, I think. The tart shell on the coffee tart was like cardboard - really tough and hard, almost impossible to get through with the spoon. You really needed a knife, and that means it's bad pastry. (Assuming the same person made the madeleines and the pastry for the tomato tart, he or she could use a refresher course in baking.) Also, the white chocolate on top tasted slightly greasy and heavy to me. The parfait needed less cream and more orange, and the orange should have been left alone instead of jellied.
Desserts and other minor critiques aside, I think Mama Ti Lee is doing really interesting food with considerable skill, and it's a great modern dining option in the medina. (There are other fancy modern restaurants in Marrakech, but they tend to be located in the new part of town.)
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