MOROCCO: CASABLANCA

Of all the websites in all the………….. Oh, come on, you just knew I was going to begin with something from that dire little B movie, didn’t you?

Before I arrived in Casablanca, I had a look at a couple of guidebooks. One described it as “unloved and unlovely” and the other was even less favourable describing it as ‘actively rank”

I knew immediately that I would like it here and I have. A great deal.

Oh, it is far from being a pretty city. In fact, it is downright ugly and has none of the tourist attractions I anticipate seeing in Fez or Marrakech in the next few days.

Despite that, it has the appeal that DH often seek out. That is, a city just getting on with it, none too bothered if you are a visitor or not. It is a city full of working stiffs just concentrating on earning their daily crust and then spending the rest of the time eating that crust anywhere they can find it.

It may not be a city with much to look at bar the Hassan II mosque with its 100,000 capacity, a tatty looking Medina and a bit of a port, but it is a city that makes up for it with its own bustling charm and enough food options to make a palate jaded by more than a year on the road perk up and take notice.

It is a city where you can pop into any neighbourhood snack bar and get an excellent mixed grill of chicken, merguez sausages, beef chunks and lamb chops for £2.

It is a city where you can amble into any local patisserie and come away with a box of pastries so good you want to put them on the bed and roll around in them while making “ooh-ahh” noises

It is a city where supper can be taken at a small storefront next to the market where half a spit roast chicken is served with a warm dipping sauce of juices from the bird mixed with oil, parsley, garlic, lemon zest and pine nuts all to be mopped up with chunks of bread.

It is a city where, alongside the same market you can have a plateful of exquisite fried fish and seafood for less than a Starbucks back in London and it is a city where slow cooked tagines with chicken and preserved lemons followed by a dense, meaty pastilla of pigeon dusted with icing sugar can be had any time of day.

It is city where, with nothing in particular to look at, you can look at nothing in particular, for as long as you like, while drinking glasses of sweet tea infused with thick bunches of mint or strong, thick, black coffee.

It is also a city where it is easier to find a camel’s head on a hook, outside a butchers shop, than it is to find a beer. But, that’s Morocco.

As I said I rather like Casablanca it could be the beginning of …………….

I really am terribly sorry.

For those Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young fans amongst you. Tomorrow sees me on The Marrakech Express. It’s taking me to Marrakech don’t you know?

SENEGAL: LAND OF TERANGA

I am told, by my new chum, Bath, that “Teranga” Means welcome in the local Wolof language.

Well, I certainly got a welcome when I arrived a Dakar airport, but I am not sure it is the one that the Senegal Tourist Board had in mind or would wish to be reported by any visitor.

My plane did not get in until midnight and, the moment I stepped through customs into the grim arrivals hall, I was besieged by touts selling everything from phone cards to chewing gum. That in itself was not a problem. I have become used to that with my recent travels across India and Africa. What I have not become used to is being physically manhandled by taxi drivers, having people try to push me over to steal my phone and bags and having to fork over $10 to some one to be my “bodyguard”

By the time I finally met up with the people who had been struggling to get through security to find me, I was ready to get back on the plane and go, well just about anywhere.

Terranga indeed.

It says something about the country and my guide, Bath (pronounced Batch) that now, four days later, I am desperately sorry to be leaving what is one of the most fascinating and hospitable places I have been on the whole EAT MY GLOBE trip.

Bath knows everybody and has been taking me on extended walks through the city of Dakar to see the markets, shops and restaurants including small, bustling local joints where bowls of steaming, fiery Maffe (stews) are served for a little less than £1 and, my own particular favourite, Chez Loucha, Bath’s favourite in the city, where I tried the spicy goodness of Yassa Chicken soured with olives and local palm vinegar.

In between meals, I have taken the opportunity to see the other limited sights Dakar has to offer including a day trip to the infamous Isle De Goree, a former slave pen from which 15-20 million slaves were sent off, through “The Door of No Return” to The Americas, 6 million of them died en route.

Best of all, however, was Bath’s suggestion that I join him for a night in his home town of Rufisque some 20 miles along the coast from the capital. Famous for being the first town of any consequence in Senegal, it has suffered a decline in proportion to the rise of Dakar, but for all that, is a laid back, easy going city with not a French tourist in sight.

Bath took me to his home near the railway station where his family extended incredible hospitality and fed me another local speciality Thiebou Wekh, fish with rice. One of the great tastes of the trip with bits of crunchy rice from the bottom of the pan being laced with “soul” a local mix of spices both of which complimented the sweet flesh of the bony fish.

Last night, we went out on the town. Well, we went to a small local bar call Diobasse, where Bath introduced me to the favourite tipples, Gazelle beer and Pinchez, a rather potent local rose wine which in context goes wonderfully with Diba, chunks of roasted beef which have been marinated in garlic and chilli

It’s been a fun few days and I would like to return, all the more suprising given my first impressions of the country and the people on my arrival at the airport when I would rather have been anywhere but here.

Next, I am off to do a “Bob & Bing”

On the road to Morocco

MOZAMBIQUE: WHERE THE SUNNY SKIES ARE AQUA BLUE

Well, HP complained that my last post was scant in the food department. A serious complaint when it comes to matters DH.

He was right, of course, but there was a reason or, reasons. Primarily, it was about the wine, not the food (the hint was in the title) and, secondly, was the fact that the food in South Africa was, brai apart, a bit blah. Not actively bad, just nothing actively worth writing about.

Here’s hoping this makes up for it and HP resumes his rightful pride in my every utterance. He loves me so no one else has to.

Mozambique is as far from South Africa as you can imagine. The moment we stepped off the plane from Cape Town to be faced with the crumbling façade of Maputo’s decaying streets, we knew we had gone from first to third quicker than Leeds United.

Truth be told, there is little to charm about the ugly capital city. A tour of the sights of significance took all of an hour including the main market and the fish market where, if we had not made other plans, we could have purchased some of those enormo prawns for which the country is famous and had them prepared at adjacent stalls.

Instead, we set our sights on Costa Do Sol, Maputo’s most famous restaurant and an African institution. Set on the edges of the glistening India Ocean, this Art Deco eatery has been supplying the well fed of Mozambique with achingly fresh shellfish for over seventy years. We were soon seated on the terrace with the first of many local beers and deciding between small, medium, large or fuck off, prawns while chewing on some grilled squid and spicy Portuguese sausage.

Neal, unfortunately, was not a well man, the result of a dodgy meal following our late arrival the night before. So, when his plate of a dozen medium prawns arrived at the same time as mine, he went distinctly green. He battled on, but soon had to give in leaving half a plate of the local delicacy for me to gorge down with my own dozen. Sympathy only goes so far when seafood is concerned

Spectacularly fresh and meaty, they were served well by a chilled bottle of Portuguese wine.

Leaving Maputo was not a great hardship, particularly when our next stop was Guludo Lodge on the Quirimbas Archipelago. A relatively new lodge run entirely on Eco principles the lodge supports the local villages, employs over fifty locals and makes little impact on the local environment.

Our tented banda was lit with paraffin lamps with the only power source coming from a generator in the main office where we had to send anything that needed charging. Not that we could get a signal when our phones were working anyway.

A more idyllic spot you could not find and all the more appreciated after the four-hour drive to get there, a welcoming drink and our first meal under the clear, starry skies. A perfect romantic spot, had I not been there with a bearded man from Lincoln. Neal offered to spoon, but it wasn’t quite the same falling asleep next to someone whose snoring drowned out the sound of the ocean some twenty feet away.

The fact that the food, prepared by frighteningly young ex-pat, Emma, was good too was an added bonus, particularly when everything, bar the fish and seafood supplied by local fishermen, had to be brought up from Pemba.

There was little to do all day but laze in a hammock, indulge in a bit of snorkelling, help local fishermen haul in their nets and play with the kids in Guludo village. All good relaxing fun.

Add that to the unfailingly charming service from everyone else at the lodge and Guludo was as pleasant a place to spend three days as I have had on the whole trip so far.

I would love to say that, on our return for a final night in Maputo, we headed out to chow down on some piri piri chicken or seafood. But, thanks to the joys of LAM, the flying gulag that is Mozambique’s national airline, we suffered a five hour delay and arrived at our hotel just in time for a cheese toasted sandwich just before the bar closed. Eat My Globe indeed.

Next stop, Jo’burg for one night and then on to Senegal.

805 OLD KENT ROAD: YOU GOT ANY AFRICAN IN YOU? WOULD YOU LIKE SOME?

I am told that, I was unkind about my annoying Aussie friend, Chelsea last time I posted about her. So, I will resist my first urge to refer today, to her as “approaching thirty” and concentrate on the fact that she donated to the “Simon goes freelance fund” and bought me dinner last night.

Of course, I organised it, such things being beyond a person who has the attention span of a gadfly and, as is my want picked somewhere a little out of the way and a little out of the ordinary. Chelsea is the one person I know who is, in that regard, fearless and will go anywhere when there is good food on offer.

So tonight? Well, we were not quite sure. I had the address. In fact it is the name of the restaurant, 805 Old Kent Road. But, I had no clue which end of that slightly dubious street it was. Not indeed did the cab driver and there followed a long drive that took us from in front of Liverpool St station to the edges of New Cross where I only normally go to visit my hubcaps.

Still, we arrived safe and sound and found the restaurant without any trouble. 805 was, according to most descriptions I found during a little bit of research, the best Nigerian restaurant in London. The Old Kent Rd is, for some reason, littered with them. I have no idea why, but 805 is the one everyone said to head for.

Eating out as often as I do, I am usually pretty good with menus. Here? Not clue number one. I can’t recall a time when I have had to ask so many questions of a server as I did here. Fortunately, the waitress was patience itself and delighted to help guide us through what was otherwise daunting task.

To begin, I was disappointed to find out that they were out of Santana. Apparently a dish made of fried gizzards. So, instead, we chose to share medium size plates of Beer mate and Goat Pepper soup.

In as many years as I have been eating out, I cannot recall a dish as hot as the beer mate. Imagine eating the hottest chilli you can find, in Hades on a 100o day in July. Well, it was hotter than that. Chelsea mailed me this morning that she felt like someone was rubbing chilli into her buttocks. While that thought made me slightly queasy, she is correct. The aftermath was inevitable and I have not cried so much since I last watched Brief Encounter. I quite liked it.

The Goat pepper soup was a lot more benign with a sauce with the depth of long cooking and big chunks of chewy goat with a slab of tripe to add texture.

We had barely begun to get to grips with these two dishes, washed down with some local beers, before the main courses arrived. Dainty, they weren’t. This is not food for the squeamish or the fussy. This is full on food for people who need refuelling after a hard days work.

Jollof rice was not that much fun. The rice cooked with tomatoes and spices and topped with dodo (a fried plantain) would have served four people but it was so dry and unappealing that I could only take a few mouthfuls. It came with a bowl of “assorted meats” which contained more tripe and tough chunks of beef and goat.

Much better was a dish of tilapia topped with a layer of steamed ewedu (like a slightly slippery spinach) in a spicy but not overpowering sauce. It came with a dish of gari, which is made from ground cassava. The texture reminded me of wet polenta and it serves the same purpose to mop up juices. As required, we downed cutlery and used our hands to good effect and, although we made a valiant effort, we barely made a dent in our plates much to the concern of our waitress who kindly doggie bagged the remains for Chelsea.

We shared something cold made with coconut for pudding to douse some of the flames and asked for the bill which was about £60 including service and the drinks.

Amusing though it would have been to leave Chelsea to find her own way back from New Cross in the middle of the night, I thought better of it and we got a cab back to home turf by which time she was looking a little tired and emotional as the picture shows. That may have had something to do with the Guinness night cap she insisted I buy her before we parted. I guess it is the least she deserves for putting up with all the grief I give her.

Next time I am trying to think of something even further away both in terms of travel in London and in the world. Anyone know a good Peruvian in Purley?