Personalities

Mourad Lahlou

Mourad's Links:

Aziza

Mourad lahlou, chef and owner of Aziza in San Francisco, is one of the most dynamic and individual chefs in the bay area. Earning both local and national recognition for his striking modern interpretations of traditional Moroccan dishes, Lahlou has fused the finest flavors of his native cuisine with the San Francisco Bay Area's abundance of fresh, top-quality ingredients. Since opening Aziza, Lahlou has been honored with three and a half stars from the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition, he bested Iron Chef Cat Cora on the Food Network show, “Iron Chef America” in March of 2009.

Despite having received no formal culinary training, Lahlou is a master at creating artfully plated dishes that combine the heart of homestyled food with the bright, delicate flavors of professionally prepared fare. A leader in modernizing Moroccan cuisine and adapting it to a fine-dining setting, Lahlou is at the forefront of a growing community of chefs who have taken the foods of their homelands into another realm through the inspired use of California's bounty.

Before opening Aziza, Lahlou was chef and owner at Kasbah in San Rafael, California, which he opened in 1997. Kasbah steadily gained acclaim for Lahlou’s culinary creations, and in 1998 the San Francisco Chronicle named him a “Rising Star Chef.” However, Lahlou came to feel that consumer attachment to the very traditional Moroccan food and decor at Kasbah was beginning to inhibit his growth as a chef. In order to create a more modern establishment and pursue his culinary goals, Lahlou conducted an extensive two-year search for a San Francisco location and closed Kasbah to open Aziza in November 2001.

While many successful chefs long anticipate a career in the food arts, Lahlou found himself drawn to the kitchen quite unexpectedly. Having traveled to the United States from Marrakech in 1985 to pursue a higher education in macroeconomics at San Francisco State University, Lahlou never anticipated running a restaurant. Instead, he began cooking for a personal reason: to ease the loneliness he felt while studying so far from home. Working largely from memories of watching his mother prepare traditional Moroccan dishes, Lahlou began cooking experimentally at first for himself and later for small groups of his friends and professors. After receiving his master’s degree in economics (and a great deal of positive input on his cuisine), Lahlou had intended to continue his work towards a Ph.D. however, recognizing that his potential in the kitchen was not to be taken lightly, Lahlou postponed his academic career in order to supervise the kitchen at Kasbah. At the moment he is keenly focused on his present task at Aziza: revolutionizing Moroccan cuisine.

Lahlou lives in Sausalito.