Inside Morocco | SA Weekend restaurant review

Tucked away in a series of Magill Road shopfronts is a restaurant filled with delicious flavours from the other side of the world – and outstanding value.

Dining room at Inside Morocco restaurant, Stepney

This is a story of unexpected love found in faraway places. And of family secrets passed through the generations.

It begins in Morocco’s magical Atlas Mountains, where an intrepid traveller from South Australia, Janet Belchamber, finds a room in a local hotel. She meets the hotel’s manager, Mohamed Ghanmi, and that brief encounter becomes something more.

Over the next 18 months, the pair keep in touch and travel to see each other. Then, in 2012, they marry in Adelaide and he moves permanently to the opposite end of the world.

The couple decide to open a shop, Inside Morocco, selling lamps, rugs and other homewares imported using connections from Ghanmi’s previous life.

As it happens, he is also a fine cook, having learnt at the elbow of his mother recipes that came from his grandmother and previous generations. Now, in his new home, he begins preparing meals for friends and they ask him to cater for weddings and other events.

Chicken tagine at Inside Morocco restaurant, Stepney.

Vegetable tagine at Inside Morocco

He starts offering light meals and drinks during the day at Inside Morocco, alongside the existing business. Then, in April, he pivots to opening later for dinner, when more substantial tagines and other dishes can be served with a glass of wine.

The restaurant (if we can call it that) is on Magill Rd, among a row of shops that include a couple of other food-related outlets, and we stumble upon it during an expedition to buy croissants from the neighbouring patisserie.

Returning one evening, we settle at a table in the first of a series of dining rooms that still have the trappings of the initial homewares venture. Rows of intricate iron and stained-glass lamps hang overhead, decorative ceramics take up much of the wall space, and the bar/servery is finished with finely detailed tiles.

It’s a little bit of souk colour in suburban Stepney, though the contemporary soul/funk/rap playlist doesn’t exactly build on this atmosphere.

On a quiet night (we start as the only customers) Belchamber has come in to look after the service, while her husband runs the kitchen solo.

Not surprisingly, the menu is brief, with a handful of snacks and seven main dishes, just enough to make up a shared feast. The harira soup, a personal favourite, is a scratching due to the day’s warm weather.

Our meal kicks off, then, with a trio of dips – beetroot, hummus and, best of all, a puree of pumpkin in which the veg’s natural sweetness is countered by the underlying tang of preserved lemon. The platter also includes carrot and celery sticks for healthier scooping but the pita triangles stacked to one side could be fresher. I’d be ordering a serve or two of the flaky Moroccan flat bread, still sizzling from the hotplate, instead.

Lamb tagine at Inside Morocco

Bastilla at Inside Morocco

The wonderful North African savoury/sweet pie known as bastilla (or pastilla) is translated into two filo parcels that look like oversized spring rolls. Dusted in stripes of icing sugar and cinnamon, the crunch of the fine pastry layers give way to a golden filling of shredded chicken that has been poached with turmeric, saffron, mace and preserved lemon, among other ingredients. Yes, the shape might be a compromise but the fragrance of the spice, with its bright, high-pitched notes (no cumin here) is the real deal, as is the surprise of the sweetness. It makes me want to travel again, soon.

The same goes for a lamb shoulder tagine that has clearly spent hours in its traditional glazed pot with cone-shaped lid, lazing about in a burbling stock including cinnamon, paprika, star anise and a hint of cayenne pepper. And don’t forget to order couscous that, after steaming three times and being anointed with oil and butter, is a totally different experience to the instant stuff everyone makes at home.

During dinner, we eavesdrop on a Moroccan family at the next table who have been living in Adelaide for only a few months. In between speaking their native language and French, they are helping their young daughter to learn English. More people from afar with their own story to tell. All part of an eating experience that is more fulfilling than you might expect.