Chef Mourad Lahlou of Napa's Moro restaurant talks food, tradition
Napa's Oxbow Public Market has a new vendor, Moro.
The concept is inspired by Moroccan street food. It is the creation of chef Mourad Lahlou, a Napa resident who has had a home in Coombsville for over 10 years. The chef has little time to enjoy his Napa home. He still commutes daily to San Francisco to oversee his highly acclaimed restaurants in San Francisco. He also recently launched a new restaurant, Miro Kaimuki, located in Honolulu, Hawaii, collaborating with chef Chris Kajioka.
Lahlou explained in a recent interview that the menu at Moro is a nod to his childhood growing up in Marrakesh. Diners can share many items on the menu, family style.
Lahlou arrived in the United States from Morocco in the early 1990s at 17 to pursue a degree in economics at the University of San Francisco to secure a good job upon graduation — something to make his family back home proud.
Lahlou explained how lonely those early days were. "I was so homesick. I called friends and family daily, sometimes multiple times, and talked for an hour and a half. A call could cost $200. It wasn't a viable solution."
He missed the big family meals.
"Back in Morocco, every morning at home was chaos," Lahlou explained. "People are arguing about bathrooms, showers, getting their coffee, and quickly heading to school or work."
The adults who didn't work, including his mother and grandmother, stayed home and cooked the day's main meal. "It was mandatory that we come back for the meal. Life stopped on the outside, and we all came to the house and had lunch at this big table. Then you have tea and talk a little bit, and then everyone returns to work," the chef recalled.
Lahlou observed that people in America ate on the go, even in their cars.
"I thought about how lonely and isolated people looked. That's when I started my campaign to cook," he said.
Lahlou explained he was too embarrassed to call his mom or grandmother to ask for recipes, so he cooked from memory.
"I would remember how she used to chop onions first and put them in a pot, then she added the spices. I remembered the sauce was red, so it must have tomatoes. I was figuring out this (stuff) on my own, and it was a disaster." He continued experimenting and, little by little, re-created the recipes from his memories.
He began sharing his cooking with other students. "I was so broke, so if I had a date, I would cook for her. Or if it was someone's birthday, anniversary or another celebration, I would cook."
Lahlou shook his head and laughed before he said, "Americans (really) celebrate. Any excuse to celebrate. I once called my mom to wish her Happy Mother's Day, and she said, 'What's that? Every day is Mother's Day. What are you talking about?'"
As a teacher's assistant, Lahlou became close to his professors.
"I would bring over an entire feast for grading papers," he recalled. He still hadn't told his family of his new hobby. "In Morocco, cooking as a profession is not highly regarded; you become a lawyer or a doctor but not a chef. In Morocco, food is based on nostalgia, and a successful meal should taste like your mom's or grandmother's recipe.
"In America, food is always evolving, and people are looking for reviews in the San Francisco Chronicle to find the next best thing, as recommended by food critic Michael Bauer."
With graduation from his master's program looming, he knew he would either have to get a serious job or pursue a PhD "because that was expected of me."
Instead, he went to his professors and asked them to invest in his restaurant. He had identified a perfect building near Civic Center: "It was a gorgeous Moorish style building with tiles, wood carving, and plaster," he remembered. The owner had the BMW dealership next door and was willing to lease the empty building to Lahlou. He approached his professors to become investors in a Moroccan restaurant even though he had never worked in commercial food service.
"I reminded them, 'You always told me I should open a restaurant.'"
Lahlou pointed out that it was 1996 and "right around the dot-com crazy (stuff) when new things are popping up every day," inferring that there was cash to be found, even amongst professors. Kasbah opened with "traditional Moroccan food, served in the traditional way. The place had no windows. It's just like in Morocco. You walk through the front door and have no idea what is behind it." The restaurant was a success, and Lahlou paid his investors back quickly. After five years, the lease was up for renewal, and the landlord told him several nearby dot-com businesses wanted the building. "He doubled the rent, so I closed the location a month later."
"I was going to move Kasbah to San Francisco, but then I found out that there was a strip club with that name," Lahlou laughed at the memory.
Instead, he opened Aziza, named after his mother. He had begun to feel trapped with Kasbah. "Aziza marked a transition for me. I decided I would break out of the mold. This was an opportunity to do something new."
Lahlou started buying local ingredients and produce from the local farmers market. "If I saw arugula (in the market), I couldn't use that at Kasbah because we don't have that in traditional Moroccan recipes. I couldn't serve raw fish or medium-rare lamb chops."
Lahlou knew it was risky to deviate from a winning formula. "It was either going to work, or it was going to flop." Aziza was definitively not a flop. It soon garnered attention beyond the Bay Area. Lahlou mentioned positive reviews in the New York Times and the Washington Post and numerous awards, including multiple years as a James Beard semi-finalist. In 2010, Aziza was awarded the first Michelin star given to a Moroccan restaurant in the United States, according to the Mourad website.
In 2015, Lahlou opened his eponymous restaurant, Mourad, which operated successfully for 10 years. Mourad's closure was announced last month on Lahlou Mourad's Instagram account and on the Mourad website. Its last service was Oct. 26.
"It was a big buildout in a massive building. It was a serious restaurant. With Mourad, I wanted to move away from my mom's cuisine," Lahlou said prior to the restaurant's closure.
This fine dining restaurant was in the SoMa (South of Market) neighborhood and was highly successful "until the pandemic and the shutdown." He pivoted the San Francisco restaurant to curbside pickup and delivery, offering family-style dining. "This is the kind of food that we eat at the end of the night at Mourad. We take the leftover meat and make wraps, and it is (just) delicious."
The San Francisco Standard reports that Mourad's closure was the result of an ongoing dispute between Lahlou and the city of San Francisco over unpaid property taxes.
A loss for San Francisco has been a gain for Napa as this new casual dining approach made setting up an establishment in Oxbow more achievable. Previously, he had believed that his "fine dining style" of cooking couldn't work in Napa, but now he was ready to move to a more casual concept. A complete gutting and re-outfitting of the former C Casa space was necessary. Moro opened in March of 2024.
Lahlou explained that every restaurant must tell a story. In Moro's case, it is his memory of the market in Marrakesh, a vibrant gathering place, where after sunset, food stalls are busy, entertainers are performing, and people gather until three in the morning.
"Moro has the kind of food I was sneaking out to eat or on my way home," he said. "I used my allowance on these sandwiches but still had to eat my dinner."
The menu at Moro offers a choice of protein, including a slow-roasted lamb, served on a choice of spiced couscous, salad, or as a wrap on homemade pita. Lahlou envisions a family or a group starting with spreads to share, "maybe some olives and spiced pecans." He is especially proud of the harcha, a Moroccan-style cornbread.
"I worked on this recipe at Aziza during the pandemic, and it's really moist and nice," he said.
Lahlou's campaign to get Americans to eat together continues; whether in a fine dining restaurant or at a casual outlet, for Lahlou, food is meant to bring people together.
