June 2006 Cheap Eats

Where else can you get dinner-and-a-show at prices like these?

The good news is that the nightly belly-dancing and pungently spiced Moroccan standards are equally deserving of your attention at this lively restaurant in Silver Spring's City Place mall.

While dipping into a bowl of buttery black olives in harissa-flecked oil, consider the rest of the meal. Do you start with an elegant hummus rife with tahini or a lemony eggplant salad? Make it easy and order both, while lamenting that the bread isn't better--both hummus and eggplant cry out for a good dipper. Move on to the sweet-savory chicken bestilla (ask that the kitchen go light on the powdered sugar), the spicy little meatballs glazed with a sauce of tomato and harissa, or a tart but delicious chicken tagine with preserved lemons and green olives. Then settle back with Moroccan sugar cookies and mint tea and take in the swirl of scarves as the belly dancer does her thing.