FIVE ESSENTIAL ALGERIAN INGREDIENTS
Semolina ‘Algerians fry things in semolina, use it in bread, couscous or bourek pastry – the way it breaks in your mouth is incredible. To make the Berber bread, kesra, a semolina, water and olive oil paste is flattened and cooked on a clay dish over fire – it’s the best you’ll ever eat. We have it with long, sweet, hot Algerian peppers and peeled tomatoes, charred and mashed with olive oil.’
Tarik opened Los Moros in 2018;
‘IMoros. In a way, it did. Launched in 2015, the always say, “my falafel got me a restaurant”,’ laughs Tarik Abdeladim, owner of York’s Los Algerian chef’s original street-food kiosk had big fans in the owners of El Piano, a legendary York vegan restaurant. In fact, they liked Los Moros and its falafel so much that, when they decided to close after 21 years, the El Piano team invited Tarik to take over their Grape Lane premises.
Dersa ‘Not many people outside Algeria have heard of dersa (see recipe above). It’s used as a harissa-like marinade for meat, and as a flavouring base for tagines, the potato stew chtitha batata or loubia b’dersa (bean stew).’
Three years on, Los Moros, now a Michelin guide-listed restaurant, is forefront in a new wave of ambitious York indies. It is a fitting pinnacle to Tarik’s lifetime in hospitality. Now 51, he started out, aged 17, travelling from Algeria to work summers on the Côte d’Azur: ‘It was unusual. But my dad had lived in Paris and took us to France. We were accustomed to it.’