The short of it: If you want to go to a fun looking place with cool music, visit during happy hour or with a Groupon, when it will be a little cheaper - but go with very low expectations.
The long of it: I enjoy new experiences, especially with food, and I am generally very forgiving, especially the first time I try a new cuisine or restaurant. I really wanted to love this place! I would have settled for decent....but it wasn't.
We did not have a Groupon or any discount, so our four course dinner was ~$70 for two, and we both only drank water.
The first course was basically a weak tomato soup, and it had little pieces of pasta and broken up chick peas. Meh. Not terrible, but just not flavorful or interesting.
The second course was a salad. It was cooked carrots on the outside and a pureed red pepper/cumin thing in the center, served cold. It was very pretty and I loved the way it tasted. It was refreshing - and there was EXACTLY the right amount of cumin. I would definitely have this again. It was served with some dry bread, which I abandoned after a bite.
The third course was the bastilla. This is a very small amount of lamb meat and rice topped with crispy phyllo dough. Basically anything with phyllo is going to be good - similar to the way that deep fried things are good, if you know what I mean. Other than that, it was nothing to write home about - the filling was pretty salty - no other discernible flavor. I did not detect any cinnamon or sweetness as others have written about.
Finally, for our entrees, we had lamb tagine and lahm hammer (SP??). Both were tender, slow-cooked lamb. That was the good part. The bad part is that both were SO SALTY that they were barely edible. There was also not a lot of meat, but there was a lot of bone and sinew. The preserved lemons that should have adorned the tagine were almost non-existent (maybe three or four bites where you could taste lemon, otherwise absent). We brought home some of the tagine and I just tasted it after two days in the fridge - and it was still too salty to be palatable and still flavorless.
After seeing how many great reviews there were here, I guess I would consider trying it again at happy hour or with a groupon.
more