With work not having reached the hectic pace it often does as the year drags on, we decided to check out one of the newer restaurants in downtown St. Paul this week. It’s a Mediterranean place, called Fhima after the owner, who is also the proprietor of the Minneapolis Café in downtown Minneapolis. Fhima is Mediterranean in a more comprehensive sense than most places one finds locally; not a Eurocentric interpretation but including North African, especially Moroccan, influences. The owner himself has a cross-Mediterranean background (see below).

It was the Moroccan angle that made me want to check out Fhima this week. I had just returned from a short trip to Paris, where I had excellent Moroccan food at an unassuming, charming little place in the 13^th arrondissement called Le P’tit Cahoua. If you happen to be in the City of Lights, I would highly recommend it. It’s on blvd. St. Marcel, well out of the tourist areas, and quite affordable. I tried both a tagine and a couscous dish and both were excellent. Good Moroccan food isn’t easy to find in the U.S. in my opinion. (This may seem like shameless self-aggrandizement but you’ll thank me if you happen to follow the recommendation!)

B and I first went to Fhima shortly after it first opened late last year, for dinner with our significant others. To put it mildly, we were underwhelmed then. I hadn’t returned since, but the reviews, official and unofficial, had been getting better so I was eager to give it a second chance.

The restaurant’s décor is worth a repeat visit anyway. The signature element is the wine storage unit—a ceiling high transparent rack in the middle of the dining room. Overall the style is not so much Mediterranean as modern Scandinavian: clean lines, spare furnishings, blonde wood, steel, and glass. The one loosely Moroccan element is the long upholstered seating bench along the back wall with the profusion of throw cushions arrayed on it.

The menu is diverse and includes standard as well as distinctive items. Among the sandwiches, served on baguettes, are a harissa swordfish and merguez (Moroccan lamb sausage—I didn’t attempt to compare it with the one I had at Cahoua’s!). The seafood section includes a trout with dates and a seafood paella, although the fact that no extra time is required for its preparation makes me wonder about the authenticity of its preparation. In the poultry and meat section you’ll find pork and lamb tagines, couscous, kefta kebab over risotto, roasted range chicken, and a pot a feu. Pasta and pizzas bring in an Italian element, and soups and salads are also available.

To start out, we shared the mussels starter. This consisted of a good helping of fresh mussels in a provençale broth. The mussels tasted fresh and were done very well. I also liked the slightly creamy, spicy broth.

It would have been nice to have had some bread to sop this up with, but the bread rolls we were served were heavy and dense, as if underdone. When we complained we learnt that the kitchen had had some oven problems that morning. Later we were brought more rolls that had been warmed up and were better, although still not fully baked all the way through. Fhima himself also came and chatted briefly with us (all this attention made us wonder if our note-taking had blown our cover); we found out that he was raised in Morocco but his culinary training is from the Cordon Bleu school.

For my main dish I was in two minds between the couscous Marocaine—lamb shank, raisins, almonds, and vegetables—and the lamb tagine, and finally settled on the tagine. I think of tagines as semi-dry, prepared with a little oil and their sauce and moistness deriving largely from the juices of the meat and vegetables. In this case, however, a tomato-base sauce almost turned the dish into a stew. The tagine also contained chick peas and vegetables, the latter including crisp pea pods. I would have preferred a more conventional rendering, but the lamb was tender and the sauce, although a little too piquant, was flavorful. B opted for the kefta kebab over risotto. This turned out to be a poor choice; at least I found the kefta (ground meat patties) dry and rubbery.

We decided to split a dessert, the Marrakech lemon tart: mostly shortbread with a thin pouring of a creamy yet intense lemon custard. In recompense for the awful bread, a crème brulée was also brought to our table. In fact, the custard was bruléed tableside—with a hot iron rather than a blowtorch. The custard had a lovely consistency but it was bland; egg and vanilla hard to discern. My concluding cup of espresso was weak and acidic.

Fhima has a huge wine list. When we first ate there I remember that we were asking for some guidance on it and neither our waitperson nor, according to him, anyone else knew much about their selection! For lunch we didn’t put the place to the same test, but I couldn’t help but wince as our waitperson butchered the pronunciation of the glass of St. Emilion Grand Cru I ordered. The by-the-glass list (which changes frequently) has a half-dozen each in red and white plus two kosher wines. I was disappointed not to see any North African selections.

There’s more pretension to Fhima than the fare warrants. The staff has an attitude; the olive oil gets poured on your bread plate from a really fancy large bottle; a huge "f" is emblazoned on the wall by the kitchen area; you get the picture perhaps. More attention to the food and less to the atmosphere would serve the place well, but it’s nonetheless good to see St. Paul getting a new and interesting restaurant.

Only a river separates St. Paul from Minneapolis but the contrast between the two cities is remarkable. St. Paul becomes a sleepy town after five PM, whereas Minneapolis continues to hum – the commercial hub turns into an entertainment and dining center as twilight approaches. The streets of Minneapolis are often full of revelers coming from the various sporting arenas and theaters that are dotted throughout the business district. This is not to say that St. Paul doesn’t have its own charms. The ability to park freely on downtown streets after 6 PM; to walk from the Ordway to the St. Paul Hotel for a drink and not have to dodge traffic; the wonderful Fitzgerald Theater; and best of all St. Paul is the home of Minnesota Public Radio and TPT channel 2.

A & I had dined at Fhima’s about a year ago just after it had opened. We were very disappointed with the food and service then but we ascribed it to teething problems. Recently we’d heard good things about it so we were prepared to be pleasantly surprised. One would never guess that this was a Moroccan restaurant by looking at the décor, which is stylish with clean modern lines and plenty of wood. The centerpiece is an enormous wine rack, which is well stocked. The carpeting, where used, is red and the walls have a nice blue finish. The entrance is marked by a blue door that leads into a small square bar. You won’t find anything remotely North African (or Arab) about the décor, with the possible exception of some stuffed cushions found on the bench like seats on the wall side of the tables. Near the bar there is a small raised stage upon which musicians perform nightly. Fhima’s is owned by David Fhima who also owns the Minneapolis Café. David is the reason why Fhima’s is not a clichéd Mediterranean/North African restaurant. He was born in Morocco and grew up in France, where he trained as a cordon bleu chef and now has tried to merge the two cultures together.

There are half dozen wines by the glass, but not nearly as interesting as the huge wine rack would suggest. I chose a glass of the 2000 Cardinale Cabernet. Cardinale is a well-known Napa valley winery but this wine was a bit too young. It was served in a terrible wineglass: short, squat and ugly. If Fhima hopes to be known for its wine then it should really invest in decent glassware. The appetizers include Moroccan Tapas (hummus, chickpeas, eggplant, red peppers) an excellent dish from previous memory, Roasted chicken drumsticks (great bar food) and the Mussels in provençale broth which we shared. The mussels were exquisite, plump and cooked just right with a delicious broth; these were served with thin French fries that were tasty if slightly greasy. We were served bread that at best was old and at worst under cooked, instead of butter olive oil was poured into our small plates. I am not sure if anyone in the Mediterranean eats their bread this way; I certainly don’t. From the lunch entrées I choose the Kefta over risotto. The menu lists poulet rôti (roasted chicken), pot au feu of chicken, lamb tagine, Moroccan sausage, pizza and few sandwiches (on baguettes). The kefta is supposed to be minced meat (lamb or beef) marinated with savory sauces and grilled over an open flame. The kefta that was served to me had the consistency of cardboard and about as much flavor. The risotto was swimming in fat and made me draw unflattering comparisons between this risotto and the one I had had at PVD with A the week before.

Unlike Dara (of City Pages fame) who is easily recognized, it’s not often that restaurants figure out that we’re reviewers. We try and disguise our note taking and make it look like two tech nerds (which we are) out for a working lunch. At Fhima’s something we did or said blew our cover because the waiter suddenly became overly solicitous, which was followed by a visit from the maitre de and then David Fhima finally came over for a chat. The bread that we’d complained about was taken away and not replaced until we were well into our dessert, when some warm bread was brought to our table and we were told that "this was the quality of the normal bread that was served at Fhima’s." It wasn’t a great improvement over the bread that we started with. For dessert we had the Marrakech lemon tart (short bread covered with lemon custard) the intense sharpness and contrast of the sweet and sour didn’t work for me. David also sent over a complimentary crème brulée (I suspect this is the signature dessert), which was prepared (seared) at our table. The result was poor A getting a face full of steam, though caramelized sugar vapors couldn’t have been too unpleasant! I thought the crème brulée sweet but with no other discernable taste. Our bill came to $79.00.

David Fhima has shown courage and commitment in starting this restaurant and it’s a noble cause as far as downtown St. Paul is concerned; however, a lot of work needs to be done if people are to come to Fhima’s for its kitchen alone. This is also true of the other restaurants that David has been associated with. I remember the early days of Minneapolis Café when it was located at the Calhoun Beach Club, fabulous location but a very ordinary kitchen. The current incarnation of the Minneapolis Café is better known for its nightlife than its food and so it is with Fhima’s. I have been to a few happy hours at the bar and can testify to its liveliness. Around 9 PM the tables are cleared from the bar side of the restaurant and couples salsa and rumba the night away (or at least till one AM, this is Minnesota after all). So come here by all means if you want to tango with that sweaty stranger across the bar but don’t expect haute cuisine from the kitchen.