We arrived at Chez Fatma on a late autumn day, bedraggled and wet and with no reservation, and we immediately felt welcome. Fatima and her husband run the restaurant on Place Jourdan, and the cuisine is delicious and authentic. I ordered shorba, a traditional North African soup that is served across Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. The broth is made from lamb and flavoured with cumin, coriander and turmeric, bulked out with orzo pasta. I felt really happy tasting Fatima’s authentic and wonderful shorba, it was just as I remembered it from my misspent teenage years in the Maghreb. The chicken tajine was served in the traditional earthenware clay pot after which the dish is named. This consists of a red-clay circular base about 24″ across with a conical topic that sits over the base during cooking. The chicken was moist and tender, as the tajine returns the moisture steamed off during cooking into the dish. We scooped the delicious casserole onto the bed of couscous on our plates, and the deep ochre yellow broth felt like a warm contrast with the rainy grey day outside.
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