Casbah

Update 5/5/11: Casbah is closed.

In a word: Catch a whiff of that crazy Casbah food.

The specs: #0068
Address, hours & details via Isthmus; reviews at/by Dane101, Yelp, Christopher Robin, QSC; Casbah web site;

Latest Casbah news and reviews at del.icio.us

JM ate the beef kabob with a lemonade.
Nichole ate the b'stilla with a chai.
We split an order of dolma (OK, Nichole ate them while JM did his crosswords) and our meal came with pita, lentil soup, and hand-dipped chocolates.
The bill was $46, or $23/person, plus tip.
JM gave Casbah a B+; Nichole gave Casbah an A (see our grading rubric).

It was Valentine's Day and we had a reservations for the King Tut room.  The ambience of The Casbah is as authentic as you'll find anywhere it snows.  We had to take off our shoes and sat crosslegged in an elevated booth.  Kind of neat but a little uncomfortable over the long run. We were too shy to draw the curtains that partition our table from the aisle, but we did notice a wine stain from meals past.  JM stole an occasional kiss from Nichole when he wasn't working on 37-Across.

On to the food.  If any cuisine brings into sharp relief the differences between JM and Nichole's tastes, it's Middle Eastern.

For Nichole, this meal involved excellent pitas and beautifully served dolma with a melt-in-your mouth texture.  The lentil and lemon soup was a tasty repast that cleansed the palette for the main course.  The b'stilla - saffron chicken, almonds, and pine nuts layered in phyllo and dusted with cinnamon and sugar - was superb, and leftovers were a treat in the next day's lunch. The after dinner hand dipped raspberry chocolates were a pleasant conclusion.

For JM, the pitas were good but not great.  The dolma looked like something that would come to life from "Godzilla vs. the Salad Bar."  The lemon and lentil soup was a mite too lemony and the lentils remind him of beans (not a good thing for JM).  The lemonade was reasonably good and the grilled steak was great, but hummus...  yikes.  He ate it, but... Oh, and raspberries are last on his list of favorite dessert fruits.

So, while Nichole thought the Casbah was the cat's pajamas, JM couldn't say that he would return, but he does acknowledge that they do what they do very well indeed.

Comments

[Rich from Pittsburgh (soon to be from Madtown)]

This place is closed. (sigh) Too bad they couldn't mention something about that on their own website. The menu had me drooling.

[sara]

no they re-opened and it is more delicious then ever!

[Me]

The casbah is wonderful! it opened back up in October with more Moroccan dishes on the menu. The service has improved a lot too! We love this place. The food is unbelievable especially the bastilla, any lamb dish, and the m'hamra!

[BT]

Raspberries last on the list of favorite fruits? I'm not sure such a person should be reviewing foods ... hone those taste buds JM!

[JmSR]

OK... They're not last. But chocloate, to my mind, belongs with strawberries and strawberries alone (although I could be talked into banana). If I want fruit, I'll get the fruit. (And the list of fruit I won't eat, which doesn't include raspberries is quite long but still can be shrunk cf: Bamboo Hut and Mango).

[LMH]

I just went by Casbah and they looked closed - anyone know what happened?