Skip the couscous and you can eat like a king here.
Much of what will be on your table will be extraordinary.
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Le Hoggar is a North African restaurant with couscous, tangines, and grilled meats on the menu.
The people who work here are amazingly nice.
The room is a stunner.
Paintings of an oasis in the Sahara on the walls.
Beautiful mosque like abstract Arabic design work on the ceilings and the upper echelons of the wall.
I stared at those abstract designs all night. My mind flew away on magical carpets.
* * *
Among the dishes to remember:
1) Amazing house made marinated olives using a special house made aromatic oil.
The olives are put on your table on arrival.
My first olive led to pure happiness.
The owner was happy to show us the oil that is the secret ingredient.
(He would also be happy to sell you a bottle.)
The bottles come pricey - but the oil is totally worth it.
2) The best baklava I have had in my life.
Frankly, most baklava is disappointing stuff ... shredded wheat with honey dumped on it.
The owner showed us one of the secrets of his baklava ...
An absolutely superior honey.
But the real trick is rethinking the consistency of the dish to make the dish overwhelmingly a nut dish with a little bit of phyllo for texture.
The nuts made the dish.
3) A very nifty non-alcoholic house fig cocktail.
4) Superlative eggplant and tomato salad.
Now 600 million Middle Eastern restaurants make a superlative eggplant and tomato salad.
Eggplant and tomato salad is just good.
He served me a natural version and then brought some harissa to the table to give the salad extra kick.
The dish was wonderful both ways.
5) A tagine with chicken, the wonderful olives referred to above and preserved lemon.
The chicken itself was pleasant enough. The olives make everything good.
Preserved lemon is as strong an ingredient as lemon pickle is in Indian cooking.
It is massively strong and commands extreme respect.
It is a perfect foil for a chicken dish with chicken fat.
But watch how much lemon you eat at a time.
The tagines here are really wet. There is a lot of liquid and not that much solid food in the tagine.
But we had more than enough to eat for the night.
And the sauce made fine soaking up with the bread that had been brought to the table.
6) An extremely superior orange with cinnamon.
Orange with cinnamon is a classic North African and Spanish dessert.
The concept is simple.
Take an orange.
Slice it up.
Put cinnamon on it.
I have never been to North Africa ...
But in Spain what makes the dish click is that Spanish oranges are insanely good.
You could put zero on those oranges and have a dessert to die for.
Here we are working with French oranges that are not so insanely good.
BUT
Le Hoggar has some sort of kitchen trick to make these the most cinnamon-y oranges one can possibly imagine.
Not that much cinnamon is in powder form on the orange itself.
The orange is firm and well textured - so it was not allowed to macerate forever in some sort of cinnamon bath.
But something extra and wonderful was done to that orange ...
Maybe a brief and carefully considered pass through some very strong cinnamon water.
Regardless of how it was made, it was a fascinating dessert.
* * *
My wife was not all that keen on her couscous.
Given the fact that my chicken and the braised vegetables that came with it were just okay ... I could see where a couscous could go flat.
* * *
But appetizers and desserts here are amazingly good ...
Given the kitchen's natural affinity with fruit and with flavoring -
My suspicion is that the tagines that have fruit in them
Are likely to be absolutely stupendous.
They have a couple of those on the menu.
And there is grilled meat galore if you want to go that route too.
* * *
Overall there is a lot to like in this kitchen.
And if you want to take the cook's famous kitchen tricks home,
They will be happy to sell you their secret ingredients.
Frankly, if I lived in Villeurbanne,
I would think about that offer very very seriously. read more
