MedinaOnce again, I had left my book at home some­where, so it was anoth­er gold card res­taur­ant that was needed. Since my oth­er sis­ter decided to gate­crash our party, a total dis­count ven­ue, rather than a two-for-one mains was desire­able. And because it was cold and I was lazy and did­n’t feel like walk­ing any­where, some­where on the bus route home was needed – prefer­ably some­where that I could get a big plate of hearti­ness at. Med­ina was decided upon, as it seems to have beaten the curse that made oth­er res­taur­ants in its loc­a­tion at 18 Cam­bridge Ter­race close down very rap­idly. The review is after the jump.

I arrived at 6pm on the dot, our agreed meet­ing time, and the res­taur­ant was empty. The very very chatty Chinese-New Zeal­ander maitre d’ (a nat­ur­al choice for a Mor­rocan res­taur­ant!) let me pick my own table, and after crack­ing jokes for ages, brought me out a plate of grainy bread, mar­in­ated olives and deli­cious cori­anndery hum­mus on the house. I tried to hold back on the plate and wait for my sis­ters, but as he kept talk­ing, and I texted them to hurry up because I was too sober for that much chitchat, I decided to eat most of the olives by myself, as they were damn tasty. I ordered a bottle of Vid­al Sav ($34?) from the small wine list, and laughed at the maitre d’s jokes, resign­ing myself to not being able to work on my book of lists after all. Finally my sis­ters showed up and my admir­able restraint on the bread and hum­mus was rewar­ded with a new lar­ger plate of it emer­ging from the kit­chen again. They each ordered Lamb Tagine, and I opted for Chick­en Bastella, which prom­ised pastry, chick­en and nuts. Mmmmm!

Plates of a stand­ard but tasty salad came out before our mains, which was a nice touch. The tagines were warm and soupy, thick with veget­ables, and my chick­en was sur­pris­ingly dus­ted with icing sug­ar, but some­how it worked. It went par­tic­u­larly well with the extra dish of hum­mus I was giv­en with a smile. Mmmmmm chick­en pastry. It might have been nice to get some rice or oth­er form of starch with it for $24, but damn it was tasty. And we were left with some room for dessert, so of course when we heard that the bak­lava was stuffed with cashews, we had to go for that. We asked for two orders of it, and the ever-acco­mod­at­ing maitre d’ said that it nor­mally comes with four pieces per order, but since there were three of us, he’d ask the chef to give us an extra piece. Thank god he did, because oth­er­wise there might have been some ser­i­ous drama with­in the McLeod fam­ily. That bak­lava was deli­cious.

So with the 25% dis­count, we paid $32 each for mains, wine and dessert, as well as bread & hum­mus, salad and an extra piece of bak­lava on the house. It was­n’t the most mind-blow­ing food ever, but it was yummy, and the ser­vice was a little over the top but taken in the spir­it with which it was inten­ded. I’d return on a Fri­day or Sat­urday to see the belly-dan­cing, have some more laughs with the maitre d’ and to get more of that bak­lava.