Description: Iraq - 05/03/09The Around The World In 80 Meals quest had to crash and burn at some point. Who would have thought it would occur on meal number thirteen?
I had been desparate to track down a Moroccan restaurant in Manchester. Of all the countires I have been to Morocco was without a doubt the country where I consistently ate the best. When a friend advised me that they believed
Marmara in Rusholme was Moroccan I had no hesitation in insisting that we make that our next visit.
To quote Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca: "I was misinformed". While a quick scan of reviews on the internet brings up references to Marmara being Moroccan and serving good food, it turned out that it is now an
Iraqi establishment. I can only assume that it has changed hands at some point since 2007. Questioning the name 'Marmara' - which brings to mind the Sea of Marmara in Turkey - Paul was informed that it is actually the name of a small town in Iraq.
The entrance to the restaurant is on Claremont Road in Rusholme, just on the corner with Wilmslow Road. I used to pass the doorway twice a day for four years when I lived further up the road, but never went in. Upstairs you find yourself in a huge dining hall - it must be able to seat 200 at the tables already laid out easily. There is even a childrens' play area at the far end. Marmara do an all-you-can-eat buffet for a set price of £8.50. One wall is lined with cafeteria-style hot plates; an adjacent wall has a bar and a chilled dessert display. Taking plates we went to investigate the buffet.
There were bowls of salad, a small oven containing balls of falafel, lidded hot plates holding kebab meat, shawarma kebab, or fish. These latter only seemed to hold a small amount of each. Moreover, there was no indication of quite how long the food had been standing there. The ratty half-bit of fish I decided to avoid, but was quite happy to eat the salad, kebab meat and falafel.
The next bank of dishes held main meals - long grain rice, and a variety of meats and vegetables in sauces. The meats were either lamb or chicken, either on the bone or off. The veg ranged from the commonplace (carrots and peas) to the slightly more exotic (okra for example, which proved to be one of the more stand-out dishes on offer).
Desserts that were available raised from a large chocolate cake and a large carrot cake, to a freezer of eight different flavours of ice cream, to traditional middle-eastern desserts. I went for the latter - small pieces of
baklava and kataifi. Baklava I would imagine is familiar to most people, layered filo pasty filled with chopped walnuts and sweetened with honey. What I know as kataifi is a similar pastry that resembles a Shredded Wheat. It is a conglomeration of very fine strands of pastry, again flavoured with chopped nuts and almonds and sticky with honey. And these were, I have to say, very creditable.
It's a shame that I couldn't say as much about the warm dishes. Unless kept in sauce, the meat on offer was dry and oily. It was the first place where I actually felt bad the next day. Despite brushing my teeth twice and drinking a lot of water, all day I was plagued with rancid lamb-grease-flavoured belches and a vague hint of indigestion. To be honest, I'm just not sure how fresh the food on display was, and how long they had been kept on hot plates warming them through. Paul, who had concentrated on the salad and vegetables more than the meat was fine the next day. But I did not feel well at all.
But that was the next day. That evening we thought we would finish off the night with a drink. And so we walked back onto Wilmslow Road. Just a few doors down was another (presumably) Iraqi location -
Al-Baghdady Café (122 Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, M14 5AH). Popping in, Paul and I were almost immediately made to feel very unwelcome. Seating ourselves at a table we were brusquely ordered to move because there were only two of us, and the table we had sat at had
three chairs. The place was almost empty. There were only a couple of tables in the café that were occupied, generally by groups of young men smoking
shisha. Clouds of scented smoke hung in the dim light. This surprised me, as the smoking ban applies as equally to shisha as it does to cigarettes (I later discovered that Al Baghdady Café has been fined by the courts for persistently flouting the smoking ban). We just fancied hot drinks to round off the day. Paul ordered an Arabic coffee which came hot, strong and sweet in a tiny cup. I had a pot of special mint tea made with cinnamon and cardamom that was spicily sweet and slightly soporific. Each of these cost in the area of £2.50-£3.00. However, as I said, we weren’t really made to feel welcome, so after having these we sloped off.
In both places the prices were reasonable. However, my overwhelming impression of Al Baghdady would have to be the surly welcome we received. And while we were made to feel welcome in Marmara, as I say, I am attributing my illness the next day to the food I ate there. So really I was disappointed to leave with a rather negative impression of Iraqi cuisine and hospitality.
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