Just a quick review…On Saturday, we went to the last Richmond Night Market of the year. We went late afternoon and it wasn’t so busy yet, but was nice to see our city feeling so alive. We just did a walk through and then decided to grab some dinner somewhere local. Andrea picked Aziza since we could get a reservation straight away and was only a block away.
We didn’t know anything about this restaurant at all and from some quick googling, Aziza is described as a high-end Moroccan restaurant. When we arrived (about 15 min after opening), it was pretty much entirely empty. There is a big dining area in the front, a nice looking bar area, and then we were seated in the back dining area.
We started with some cocktails of course. Andrea had a tequila based cocktail and I had a mezcal one. Andrea’s was just a bit too sweet and really just tasted like fruit juice (tasty fruit juice though), but mine was delicious with the smokiness of the mezcal.
We went mostly with recommendations from our waitperson – the spreads to start, then the eggplant to share, and then the lamb shank and the corn bread.. This ended up being plenty of food for us.
The spreads included 3 different spreads – piquillo pepper & almond, dill lebni & smoked trout roe, and white bean & black olive along with some flatbread. All three were very good and we both like the dill lebni the best.
The eggplant dish had grilled eggplant topped with olive jam, piquillo, pine nut, and currant. It was a nice dish with the different flavors and texture from the grill and the pine nuts.
Then came the braised lamb shank which we wanted to try even though we had lamb shank the previous evening at Cotogna. The lamb was prepared perfectly. Meat was falling off the bone with a glaze and a nice braise with just a tiny bit of crisp/dryness on the surface that Andrea loves to chew on. The dish also included farro, parsnip crisps, celery root, a prune, and an herb (looked mostly like cilantro salad). Combining all of these into a bite created a melody of flavors that I though was much more interesting than the lamb we had yesterday.
The cornbread came in a min-cast iron dish along with some harissa(!) butter. This was pretty sweet (almost like a corn cake at this point), but was so moist and delicious, esp. with the harissa butter.
All in all it was a delicious Moraccan meal. We don’t eat a lot of Moroccan food, but we compared it to Mourad at which we had a fantastic meal years ago which we remembered being “higher end”/more innovative than this. As it turns out, this restaurant was also owned and run by Chef Mourad Lahlou which we didn’t realize, but makes sense.
As we were leaving, the restaurant was packed. It definitely seems like a very nice addition out here in the avenues.
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