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La Camel hit us like a slap to the forehead. The little Moroccan cart has been at downtown's Southwest Alder Street pod for over a year, on 9th Avenue just up from Finnegan's. But the teeming three blocks of carts can be an overwhelming Babel of world-spanning food options, with multiple iterations of shawarma, burrito and pad Thai repeating like the backgrounds on a low-budget cartoon.
And so only recently did we start to hear rumblings, tips handed off in relay fashion: You have to try La Camel.
The welcoming Moroccan cart is unique in Portland, with a homestyle menu devoted to elaborate, ceramic-cooked tagines and North African-style paellas, slow-cooked foods prepared with uncommon care. Dollar for dollar, I'd happily stack up owner Karim Baziou's kefta stews and saffron-spiced chicken against the fare at any Moroccan spot in town. He was a chef in his native country before moving to Portland, and his expertise is more than apparent in the variety and balance in his dishes. It can't be easy to make this menu out of a cart.
The kefta tagine ($8.75) is the cart's flagship—a Moroccan-spiced meatball stew served up in thick tomato sauce and topped with egg, shakshuka-style. The dish combines the low-and-slow richness of good Italian marinara with earthy North African spice and the pungent surprise of olive. The bread that comes with the dish is essential for sopping up the sauce that remains. Although, if you wish, you can also get your meatballs in toasted sandwich form ($7.75), with the same sauce.
The lamb shank ($12) is equally impressive, if not more so, a hefty marbled drumstick cooked and marinated for hours until the tender meat is burgundy within. It looks and tastes like nothing that should come from a cart, served up with a cauliflower, pepper and potato stew basking in the juices of the meat.
The chicken tagine ($9), meanwhile, does not stint on its precious saffron spice: The meat arrives basted in it, a depth of flavor leavened by the acidity of green olive and Meyer lemon. The cart also serves paellas and seafood tagines—including a salmon special—and each dish can be accompanied by housemade Moroccan-spiced coffee or gunpowder tea herbed up with fresh mint leaves.
Baziou serves the would-be home cook with spice blends he sells out of the cart. "If you've got a dish you want to make," he said, "You tell me and I will make a blend just for you." You could question the wisdom of giving customers the means to make his food—but somehow I doubt he's worried about the competition.
Order this: Kefta tagine ($8.75) or lamb shank ($12).
EAT: La Camel, Southwest 9th Avenue between Alder and Washington streets, 778-0604, lacamel.com. 11 am-6 pm Monday-Saturday.
Willamette Week