The Sultan's Tent Experience

My favorite restaurant is in Calgary. It's a fabulous Morroccan restaurant that like the phoenix, rose again from the ashes of a fire. They have relocated and it's as fabulous as ever. I've tried for 4 years to get back there. First it was totally booked due to the Calgary Stampede extravaganza, then it burned and was closed.

Tonite I had the most fabulous experience. Let me explain eating Morroccan. You eat with your hands. That's right, no utensils. They bring an ornate metal basin to your table and a matching water pitcher filled with lukewarm orange scented water. They pour the water over your hands and you wash them before eating; wiping them on the lovely big towel/napkin they provide each of you. The scent is delightful, not overpowering. You only eat the food with your right hand. This is traditional in most Eastern cultures.

They do provide a bread to pick up the bits of food by using your thumb to push the food into the bread and pinching it together and pop it into your mouth. Oh YUM.

The salad is actually four salads on one plate: beets, an incredible potato salad, a chopped tomato with herbs and a bean salad. They all were lightly oiled and spiced.

The soup was next... a delicious, full flavored tomato based vegetable soup with lentils, saffron and chickpeas and cardamom and cloves. It smelled as good as it tasted.

The next course was the most fabulous. It was an appetizer for two, b'stilla, a 'chicken pie'... a good name for it, but not your mother's pie. First the 'crust' is filo dough, that light flakey pastry dough. The pie was stuffed with crushed almonds, walnuts, pistaschios and many sweet spices, chicken from a roasted cornish game hen and it was about 6 inches around and cut into diamond shapes. Hot from the oven you didn't know whether or not to eat it or just smell the aroma for an hour or two.

The main course of tender, succulant lamb with sweet spices, cloves and saffron and plump apricots and prunes cooked into a delicious, tantalizing sauce with the consistency of honey.

During all this hedonistic extravagaza, I drank the lovely mint tea with just a hint of honey, poured into a glass cup with no handle. The pouring is dramatic, with the server raising the teapot four feet above the glass, showing her expertise in the art of tea.

Desert was similar to baklava, the mid-Eastern dessert, but not nearly as sweet, so it was lighter and drier... a lovely finish of crushed nuts, filo dough and orange essence.

My high esteem and my unmatchable memories of my many previous experiences at this amazing restaurant were totally exceeded again!

My hostess went there for her very first experience the day it reopened and loved it. You will too.

If you're ever in Calgary, Canada, give The Sultan's Tent a try.
You won't be disappointed!
I love Calgary!!!