Argan Moroccan Cuisine

'Can I get a real couscous around here?"

It was a good question, posed to me recently by a French expat hankering for a bowl of North African soul food. The mere suggestion, of course, kick-started my own craving - with savory flashbacks to a Morocco trip and the rustic little couscouserie I lived over during my student days in Paris. And that query was also the main reason I ended up below ground near Rittenhouse Square, waiting hopefully on the elaborately tufted couches of the quirky subterranean nook called Argan Moroccan Cuisine.

Couscous, after all, is a mighty grain of contradictions. We think we know it, but we don't. It's seemingly everywhere, but virtually nowhere at all in its true form. It's one of America's undisputed stars of ethnic food assimilation, now in its golden era of supermarket ubiquity. But the quick-cook boxed version has become such a mainstream staple of just-add-water convenience that those clumpy specks of mushy pasta are about as exotic as Rice-A-Roni. The genuine item is as rare as a Berber on Broad Street.

Argan's chef-owner, Mounir Draissi, is about as close as we get, just three blocks west of Broad, in a modest cafe tucked a few steps down from the 17th Street sidewalk. A native of Meknes (near the northern coast), he descends, in fact, from a Berber grandma. And he takes no shortcuts in either flavor or technique, taking nearly an hour-and-a-half to moisten, hand-fluff, and steam his semolina grains in stages, steeping them to finish with a gingered saffron broth rich in vegetables and spice. An extra smidge of smen - a Berber-style butter Draissi ages himself for three years - lends the grains a shade of extra earthy intensity.

The couscous is available only at dinner, due to the process, but every grain in the fluffy pile was distinct and infused with flavor. The couscous was mounded into hand-painted Moroccan bowls and ringed with batons of stewed zucchini and carrot. I savored it here in many variations - topped with a cinnamon-scented braised lamb shank that practically melted off the bone, a baked salmon fillet slathered in the cuminy green tang of a cilantro chermoula, and a tender half-chicken infused with preserved lemon. Our neighbors seemed to revel in the hearty vegetarian version, as well. The only thing I needed, which Draissi's wife, Ilham, happily brought me, was a side bowl of extra broth dabbed with house-made harissa to ignite the dish. And I was back in the couscous zone: question answered.