A Visit to Le Ksar

    It is hard to say goodbye to such an amazing class and place the shared experiences we had onto the shelves of my memory, but I think there was no better 'final sendoff' than to sit and share a hearty meal in Le Ksar. 
    Le Ksar is a small, quaint restaurant hiding in an alley in the 1st arrondissement just a brisk walk from place des Terreaux. Though the exterior of the restaurant can leave someone second guessing if they put the correct address into Google maps (I'm looking at a couple of you in this class), the inside leaves very little to be desired. Immediately, you are welcomed in from the cold to a warm and overwhelming comfortable environment. From the thick wooden tables surrounded by soft chairs and benches decorated with plush pillows to the soft glowing lanterns overhead to the bronze and brightly colored decor placed along the open brick walls, this restaurant has no trouble convincing you that you just walked into the dining room of an active and well-loved family home. 
        After our dinner here, I decided to visit the website to see if they had any extra information that could be added here. There was nothing to write home about but what was very exciting is that the website welcomes you with the promise that 'La chef Marocain, vous fera partager son amour pour sa gastronomie'. La chef! It just seems so fitting that we sat together and shared our families, rituals, experiences, and a dozen other tangents relating to femininity and growth, and just bonded over a warm meal prepared by la chef. Even if she was not present, her cooking still played an important part of our night together.  It's reminiscent, in a way, of many of the women characters in the books we read and movies we watched who managed to find comfort in their friends in times that were not too unsimilar to ours. 

    I've always loved small, hole-in-the-wall restaurants like Le Ksar. The closer to the original culture it is, the better it is in my opinion. I would absolutely go here again; I have been searching my schedule for free time to take my girls. It is an experience I would love to enjoy again before leaving France and returning home to the States, where I feel that immigrant culture is forced to be far removed from the origins to better fit the American palate. 

Comments

  1. GillianDecember 12, 2022 at 6:17 AM

    I also really enjoyed the visit to Le Ksar. The food was amazing, and our discussion was just as engaging. The part about putting the wrong address into google definitely would have been me if Jayden hand not stopped me when I walked by the alley. I could not agree with you more about the atmosphere and feel of the place. The decorations and set-up were very welcoming, however we were pretty much the only ones in the restaurant. Even though the space was warm, I always feel weird when my party is the only one in the restaurant. I know this is not a fault of the restaurant, but I wish our conversation was not the only conversation in the restaurant. Overall, I agree with you that was a friendly atmosphere.

    You also have really good insight on eating la chef’s food. We were literally sitting there talking about how hard it is for women to succeed in restaurants, and our food was prepared by la chef. There were no men closely connected to this meal that we had. It was a female chef who cooked the food, both of the people who waited on us were women, and then we were a group of women who ate the meal, and that is amazing. So, thank you for doing the research and discovering that the chef is a woman. I hope you do find the time to go back, because that food was really good, and you will not find good traditional Moroccan food like that back in the states.

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  2. Hailey JohnsonDecember 12, 2022 at 12:31 PM

    I completely agree about Le Ksar! It had such a warm and lovely atmosphere. I was also sad about our class coming to an end, but I think our discussions, though sometimes chaotic, helped bring some closure. It makes me happy that, for all our talk about misogyny and patriarchy, the chef that night was a woman. It can be hard not to become jaded when we talk about such heavy material, but things like that remind us to be hopeful. I also liked what you added about the female characters we studied finding comfort in friends during hard times. I definitely think of Papicha, and how much everyone engaged with that movie. Because of how lively our discussions were, that was one of my favorite periods this semester. We all engaged with the movie and saw parts of ourselves in it, but also learned about the lives of Algerian women. I’m so grateful for having had that experience! And to share Moroccan cuisine in such a nice atmosphere was really perfect.

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