Rock-N-Moroccan

I’ve never been to Morrocco, but my sister went once. She made the mistake of buying hash from a crooked dealer which was promptly seized by his cop friend who also took all her cash as a «fine». Ouch.
My experience at Rock-​N-​Moroccan wasn’t as unpleasant, but it wasn’t pleasant either. Usually «kabob» implies contact with fire during preparation. Not here. I had imagined the delicious grilled chicken and veggie dish I’d had at Aladdin Café just up the street served through a window. Instead I got some cheap Mexican grade boiled chicken smothered in mayonnaise sauce and overpowering onions crammed into a soggy pita. Call me crazy but I suspect this dish was lacking in authenticity. The couscous and tomato salad were better but in short supply. The hot tea had obviously been made hours ago and was undrinkable.
I generally love food served from a hole in a wall or a truck, so I’m disappointed to have to strike R-​n-​M off my already short list.

So it was a co-​workers evening out. A few of us met up at Coach’s for a few pre-​drinks before the real heavy hitters decided to make it down to the 39^th Street area for some fun times, stiff drinks, and good conversation at Gilhouly’s. It also didn’t hurt that one of them lived in the neighborhood so we could just park our cars there and walk on over to the bars. After practically shutting the place down, we decided to hop, skip our way across the street to the local liquor store to pick up a few cases to keep the fun times rolling. Done! I grabbed a pack of Pilsner Urquell to relive my Prague days. As it always happens after a night of boozing, we all grew hungry!
Well what do we have here but good ol’ Rock-​N-​Moroccan! It starts pouring outside, and as the previous reviewer states, they do have a walk-​up window to order. We notice the owner was starting to shut the place down. We kindly ask if he’s done for the evening seeing as how they normally close at 3am on Fridays and it was about 1:45am. Apparently he was going to close up due to the rain, but before we could be on our way he opens up the actual restaurant side for us to sit in while he cooked our order bc it was raining! HOW AWESOME IS THAT??? He didn’t have to and we most definitely weren’t pressuring him at all. Yet he still obliged. My co-​worker had been there several times previously. I took his word for it and ordered the Chicken Couscous! The owner always smiling the whole time he was helping us brought over our orders to-​go.
We went running in the rain back to the house and the smell of the food was driving me nuts! Once we got back, I cracked open a bottle of Pilsner and dove right into my food! The portion was enormous and it was probably some of the best food I have had in some time. It may have been the fact that I was drunk but the leftovers still tasted real good when it was reheated the next day! However, the hospitality and great service is what allows me to move the rating from a 4 star to 5!!!
Oh and you know what else adds to this story? An officer that just got off duty was totally enjoying a Pilsner w/​us while we were waiting. Am I delusional? Probably not, but maybe yes.

Just ate here for the first time and was amazed. The owner was working the store solo and was a gracious and hospitable host. He made us feel like we were special guests. He seated us on pillows at a table outside his walk up windows and started us off with some amazing rosewater and mint tea which was complimentary. It was lovely-​aromatic, sweet and minty. We also ordered baba ghanoush, a veggie pizza and his specialty dessert crêpe, named after his mother, the Mama Habiba. While all the food was tasty, the crêpe was out of this world. He told us it was his favorite which is why he named it after his mother. We also had a very tasty smoothy with our meal. All in all, an excellent experience. I would suggest not coming here with any preconceptions. This is a small operation, so the service may not always be spot on depending on customer flow or they might not have every menu item, but if you’re patient and gracious, you will have a fabulous dining experience. I will be coming back soon.

I’m a newbe when it comes to Moroccan food. I ordered the «couscous» to go because I learned that was a traditional favorite. It was enough to feed a family of six for about $ 20, which seemed like a exceptional deal.
At first it seemed bland, but we quickly discovered adding some salt, pepper and soy sauce brought out some hidden flavorers. I have read that Moroccan food tends to be spicy, but nothing I’ve tried at R-​n-​M seems to be spicy.
The staff bends over backwards to make sure you are satisfied with your order. Even though everything on the menu may not be a hit, I believe there are some gems like the Lemon Chicken on Semolina.

This is the kind of place that I so want to love. I visited with that preconception in mind. Couscous made in the traditional way? How could that not be fantastic? Unfortunately, our experience was mediocre. We started with the tomato and mozzarella appetizer. It was hugely unremarkable. Very little flavor, except for the dominance of acrid onion. And the dish was not helped in the least by the fact that is had absolutely no salt in it. (And the tables didn’t have a salt shaker for us to add our own.)
Then we had the lemon chicken and couscous. I had expectations of a lovely dish. I have been to Morocco, and have eaten the authentic food there, and this was nothing in comparison. The chicken was fine, but nothing more, a little dry. I would rather have had a rotisserie chicken from Costo– far better flavor and much juicier. And the couscous, which I was so anticipating, was bland and unremarkable. We were quite disappointed.
One good aspect of the place: though it doesn’t serve alcohol, the staff are very happy to let you bring your own. Various tables around us had bottles of wine, while we brought a few bottles of New Belgium’s Mothership.
An odd aspect of the place: the servers go outside and walk two storefronts down to the walk-​up window, get the food, then bring it back along the sidewalk to the sit-​down area. Not that big of a deal, but we were sitting at the table by the front door, and sweetie kept getting knocked in the shoulder and head by the servers and the trays they carried.
The chef/​owner came by our table and was very courteous. I hope that he makes a few changes, because I very much would like this quirkly little place to succeed. I plan to try the place for lunch, at the walk-​up window. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Awesome place!!! please check a real review from the KC Star about this place:

I hate writing bad reviews of places where I think the chefs and owners mean well. But here it comes.
My initial review of Rock-​n-​Moroccan was for their Chicago Dog. I had no idea this walk-​up window was, indeed, a Moroccan restaurant. So Saturday I went back to sample from the other categories on the menu and provide a full assessment. I kinda wish I hadn’t.
Right out of the gate, things were… off. The gang of three just ahead of us ordered two smoothies, a Moroccan salad and a Nutella crêpe. No joke, it took a good 20 minutes to fulfill this order. All-​the-​while, we were standing at the window being ignored, though it became clear a little later that the employees had seen me but thought I was one of the guys who had ordered before us (probably due to similar sun glasses — just speculation).
…And apparently they screwed up two of the three items ordered. The salad was supposed to come with beets, and didn’t, and the Nutella crêpe came sans Nutella. Both issues were remedied in a friendly nature by the staff, but getting two out of three orders wrong at a place with a fairly simple menu is a pretty poor showing.
That fiasco behind us, I decided to hit three different sections of the menu to round out my Rock-​N experience, ordering a turkey club sandwich, the Moroccan tabouli and a chicken gyro (in a pita – customers choose pita or crêpe).
Issue #1: no tabouli. What, the throngs of fans lining up around the block were all ordering tabouli by the gallon and the unexpected frenzy caused a shortage? Really, I have no idea why they wouldn’t have any one of their products on hand since business seems a little slow at R-​n-​M, but regardless, I was forced to go another direction. I chose the zalouk.
Listed as «fried eggplant, vinegar, fresh garlic, olive oil and… special Moroccan dressing,» the zalouk came served on a bed of shredded less-​than-​fresh iceberg lettuce, with fresh pita wedges and a dusting of paprika. It was decent, with lots of garlic flavor and a baba ganoush appearance and consistency. Hard not to like something as familiar as this, but the sad looking shredded lettuce was out of place and detracted from what could otherwise have been a satisfactory dish. Still wish I’d could’ve had the tabouli, though.
The chicken gyro had some ups and downs. The creamy tzatziki was good-​tasting, very thick and creamy, but what probably should have been a schmear or dollop was a sloppy slathering that drowned the other ingredients and squished into our hands, laps… all over. Lettuce and fresh tomato were fine, but the red onion was overly-​abundant (a gripe of mine about gyros in general) and pungent. Worst of all, though, the chicken was abominable. I’ll provide this descriptor of its flavor profile and then just move on: canned cat food.
After drying the wetness and Fancy Feast odor off my hands, I moved to what I expected to be a less offensive selection — the turkey club. Purported to be turkey, lettuce, turkey bacon, tomato and American cheese on grilled sourdough, what actually showed up in my styrofoam takeout box were some of those things, substituting less-​than-​fresh turkey cold cut meat (variance in the coloration of the turkey gave away its advancing age), a ridiculously light dusting of tiny bacon bits, lots of unexpected raw red onion, tons of similarly unexpected horseradish sauce and bread that looked a lot more like grocery store-​variety Iron Kids Bread than sourdough. And it wasn’t grilled or toasted in the least. It was a stick-​to-​the-​roof-​of-​your-​mouth puff pad.
As I took the first deplorable bite, my reason, spoken earlier, for trying something as ordinary as a turkey club from a Moroccan place re-​played in my mind: «I want to try something from each section of the menu. Who knows… they might have great deli sandwiches that people should know about.» Bad call. Even after I pried the lettuce away from the bread and wiped off as much of the gooey horseradish sauce as possible, it still tasted of a sweet, soggy spiciness that made me nearly gag. Horseradish is fine in moderation, but I find many of the jarred horseradish sauces overly sweet. This stuff tasted like Miracle Whip. And any time you put too much condiment on a thin, moist, low-​quality sandwich bread, the wetness becomes quickly off-​putting.
The raw onion was overpowering and reeked. The single, flaccid leaf of lettuce was pointless and disgusting. The American cheese was, of course, a bad choice. The bread — tasteless. The whole thing reminded me of childhood field trips when someone else’s mom packed the lunches and everything on my sandwich was unfamiliar. Wrong.
$ 14.61 later, I was as depressed and irked as one can be without feeling actual anger. Still, all these complaints being what they are, inside me there’s a soft spot for these Rock-​n-​Moroccans who serve a mean Chicago dog. So the moral of the story is: you go to Rock-​n-​Moroccan, surprisingly, for their most American offering.