A clean, well-lighted place. Hemingway was talking about a Parisian cafe filled with late-night drinkers, but the term can easily apply to MOSAIC CAFÉ (78 Masonic St., Northampton, 585-1155). For one thing, it is a clean and well-lighted place, recently redone from Bill Streeter’s Silver Maple Bindery, which formerly occupied the spot. For another, given the Edith Piaf-like music that wafts through the room and the French accents in the North African cuisine, it feels like an authentic café.
Mosaic opens for breakfast at 8 a.m., serving eggs, omelets, baguettes and dessert crepes. There is a full espresso setup in addition to coffee and sweet mint tea. The omelets can feature asparagus in tarragon sauce, merguez (lamb) sausage, or various combinations of tomatoes, onions and peppers. There are a lot of vegetables in Moroccan cuisine, and Mosaic makes use of what is available locally.
A word about the mint tea. It is sweet tea, poured from a teapot into a small glass garnished with a mint leaf. It is delicious and highly addictive and because of it, I have never tried the coffee or the various sodas and fruit drinks that Mosaic serves.
At lunch and dinner, appetizers include chicken or spinach briswats (phyllo wraps), hummus, vegetable sigars and an olive plate. The salads are stunning. An avocado version consisted of thin slices of avocado draped over a mound of artichoke hearts, cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes. It was garnished with sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and zaatar (an herb and spice seasoning mix), and drizzled with a vinaigrette dressing.
I’ve eaten lunch at Mosaic often, forcing myself to try new things instead of sticking with the dishes I know I like. Among my favorites: the Casablanca pizza, a small, four-slice pie served with Kalamata olives, tomatoes, roasted green peppers, capers and anchovies, and drizzled with a little olive oil before serving. They’ll leave off the anchovies if you ask, but don’t. Sandwiches, available as wraps or on baguettes, come in many varieties: chicken, turkey, ground beef, merguez sausage, eggplant, tuna and sardines. All are accompanied with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and a Dijon or sesame vinaigrette. I got a sardine baguette on one visit. The sardines were canned, but, as they say, “they’re from the right cans.” On another occasion, I had the eggplant sandwich, with thin slices of fried eggplant, greaseless and well cooked. In my opinion, many of the sandwiches work better on the baguettes since the wraps can be a little flimsy.
Crepes are light and lacy, and since the kitchen is open you can watch them being made. Mosaic will fill them with grilled chicken, Swiss cheese or a goat cheese/sun-dried tomato mix. There are dessert crepes, including a peach crepe that is on my list to try. Most dishes are accompanied by two slices of cucumber and a small mound of shredded carrot.
The dinner entrees are stews that feature a combination of chickpeas, green peas, zucchini, carrots, green peppers, olives, capers and a slice of lemon, plus either chicken, beef, fish or slices of hard-boiled eggs. You can have the stew over rice or accompanied by slices of baguette. Soups include white bean, lentil or fish.
Hafie Assad, Mosaic’s manager, co-owner and main cook, is a gentle, pleasant man, and the seasoning of the dishes reflects his style. Moroccans tend to use generous amounts of harissa, a hot pepper condiment, but Assad has toned it down for the American palate. He will season dishes more aggressively if you ask.
Born in Casablanca, Assad came to the United States in 1997. He had worked in his father’s shop in Morocco, but learned to cook, he says, by helping his mother at home. His older brother, Abid, owns Amanouz on Main Street in Northampton, and that’s where Hafie Assad learned the restaurant business. The brothers are co-owners of Mosaic, with Hafie assuming the main duties of running the café.
In the summer, they set out tables in front and in the back courtyard. The courtyard is a shady and thoroughly enjoyable place to eat. The vegetation is New England, but you can bring your laptop (there’s free Wi-Fi), order some mint tea and an appetizer or some desserts and indulge in a 21st-century Paul Bowles fantasy. But you’d better clear out at lunch; the place gets crowded.
Desserts include baklava (walnut and sometimes pistachio), homemade bread pudding and various other homemade baked goods including fakas (like biscotti, but more crumbly), ghriba (almond cookies) and vassma (a small square flavored with pistachios). The cookies can be a little dry, but the baklava is sweet and not too sticky.
Mosaic is open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday. Appetizers range from $3.95 to $4.95. Salads and soups are mostly $6.25 to $8.50; trout or salmon salad is $11.95. Sandwiches and crepes are $5.25 to $6.95. Entrees go from $7.95 to $12.95. Desserts are $1.95.
Originally published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 5, 2010.
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Wok Hai and Frozen Pizza
by Don on January 14, 2010
All it takes is a morning of winter thaw and I’m immediately remembering the beach. Summers when I was a boy, my family went to Far Rockaway beach. Rows of tiny bungalows, a boardwalk and a beach. For an apartment house boy, it was heaven. The boardwalk extended from Beach 1st street to around Beach 168th street, wood for almost all of its length, and once a summer all of us used to get up early and bike to the end of the boardwalk (the long way). You actually reached the end–the metal pipe railing extended straight across it. We’d rest, eat the sandwiches our mothers had prepared, then bike back.
Stone jetties broke the waves every 5 blocks or so. My friend Freddie and I used to sit at the end of the Beach 35th St jetty, as far out as we could go, and watch the spray break right in front of us. You could get far enough out that the spray never hit you, but burst right up in front of where you sat. At night, I’d turn around and watch the lights of the arcades and fast food places throw rippling red, turquoise, amber, white, and blue lines on the waves. The carnival lights on the water… for real.
After a while, we’d pick out way back to the beach, then hit one of the food places for pizza. Truth be told, it wasn’t great pizza–frozen crust, cooked in a small square oven that sat on a counter–but it came out bubbling hot. We called them scorchers and I loved the dance of taking small bites of molten cheese without searing the roof of my mouth.
When I took a class at the CIA, one of the rules was to serve “hot food hot and cold food cold.” The Chinese have a term-wok hai or wok hay–that refers to the smell and the taste that a searingly hot wok imparts to a stir fried dish. I love when a dish comes to the table bubbling and hot. I sneak tiny tastes until that perfect moment when it has barely cooled enough to eat. Thirty seconds later, it is warm and the life has gone out of it, no matter how good it still tastes. Grab life when it’s ready I suppose is the lesson. Remember to breathe when the air smells tantalizingly of humus.
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