Moroccan Soup Bar

Have you heard of that mystical Melbourne institution The Moroccan Soup Bar? The spoken menu, the unlicencedness, the vegetarian goodness?

So had I.

But I'd never tried it... until now.

And it was worth the wait.

We booked it for Andrew Ballem's going away dinner. Actually, it didn't have all that much to do with me, it was actually Andrew and Cormack who'd decided to organise it. And organise it they did (in their haphazard way).

The place is always booked to the brim. The tressel tables were crammed with people who, judging by their rosy complexions, were obviously were only tourists in the world of vegetarianism, just like us (well, most of us anyway, the guest of honour was a vegetarian but we forgive him).

And what a tour it was. The owner comes out and forces you into buying a banquet, which consists of lots of food for not very much money. She brings mint tea for (almost) everyone and then you nosh down on some bread, dips and things that once were crudités but are now pickled into something not so crudité.

The main dishes were fantastic. The most recognisably Moroccan one was the vegetable tagine with cous cous. The rest were a sublime lucky dip. The potatoes with soured yogurt were spicylicious as was the eggplant. But the dish on everyone's lips was a mystery wrapped in an enigma. It tasted to me like toasted garlic buttered pita broken up into yogurt and mixed with chick peas and toasted nuts but Cormack was convinced there was a butterscotch flavour. Whatever it was, it was certainly moorish (sorry, couldn't resist).

Coffee and deserts followed but everyone was pretty full so we paid up, tipped the conveniently jingly change into the conveniently placed tipping urn and headed off to Deco for a bottle or three of wine.

4 and a half yums out of 5.