Do yourself a solid and venture South on Bank Street, past Billings Bridge, in search of good Middle Eastern food.

We’re no strangers to this stretch of Bank Street, as some of our favourite Levantine eateries are located here. Turns out the choice is much broader than we thought, as a new Moroccan spot opened recently at a strip mall on Bank Street and Heron Road—and Anna, an Eat the Strip reader, told us to go check it out.

Husband and wife duo Souhail Bouachri and Kawtar Boutbaa opened Moul Hanout in 2022. The restaurant serves traditional Moroccan dishes with a regional twist. The couple is proud to be from Essaouira, a city on Morocco’s Atlantic coast famous for its port culture and seafront dotted with blue boats.

They welcomed us last week to their small restaurant featuring a dining area that can accommodate about one family at a time. For our order, they recommended we get the chicken tajine, or the seafood pastilla. Famished, we opted for both and received piping hot cups of complimentary mint tea while waiting for our food.

We learned Moul Hanout is one of the few restaurants that has a perfect five-star rating on Google. We soon knew why.

The tajine was simple and beautiful. Served with chicken, olives and—you heard right—fries, the dish was tangy and well-seasoned with parsley. The fries had soaked up the flavourful gravy and were an instant hit. The real showstopper however was the seafood pastilla. Baked to perfection, the dish featured generous portions of shrimp and the vermicelli noodles were cooked to satisfying crisp.

If we were to go back, we might even order two pastillas, one for same-day consumption and the other to freeze.

As delicious as the food may be, the real charm of Moul Hanout is the owners. Souhail and Kawtar regaled us with stories of their hometown, their adventures across Morocco and the one time the Moroccan ambassador in Ottawa showed up unannounced at their restaurant because she had heard about their amazing food.

Moul Hanout a is a gem in the Middle Eastern food landscape on Bank Street. So too are its owners.