Kous Kous Restaurant

Kous Kous
3940 4th Ave, # 110
San Diego, CA 92103
(619) 295-5560
https://www.kouskousrestaurant.com/

Ever since trying the lamb tagine at Kous Kous a few months ago, I’ve been dreaming of it and have wanted to go back.

Unfortunately, we chose to visit on a Saturday. This was bad for a number of reasons: 1) it was very busy and crowded at the restaurant and we could barely hear each other, 2) the food took a long time to arrive, 3) because the restaurant is small, all the people made the place really warm, and most importantly 4) they were out of lamb tagine!!

Lesson learned, next time we’ll go on a different day.

We started with some complimentary carrots and olives. I’m not sure how they cook it but I really enjoy the carrots.

For an appetizer, we chose the vegetarian sampler. It comes with zaalouk (roasted eggplant flavored with cumin, olive oil and lemon), khizzou (caramelized carrots with roasted garlic and ginger) and shak-shouka (roasted tomato and marinated bell pepper). The sampler is served with hot pita bread.

I really like all three of the dishes and I can never decide which one I like better.

After getting over the heartbreak of no lamb, I opted to try the beef tagine. The meals are served with a choice of cous cous, garlic mashed potatoes or bread. I chose the cous cous because I really enjoy the cous cous here.
The portions here are pretty  big and I couldn’t quite finish my food. The beef was good, but it definitely was not as good as the lamb. The lamb shank was a lot more tender. Beef chunks, when cooked for many hours, tend to get a little dry and there were some chunks that were a little dry.

One of the other people in our group also got the beef tagine so I didn’t take a picture. BF chose the beef brochettes, which are skewers of grilled filet mignon. BF chose mashed potatoes with his food, which surprised me.

I asked him why after he ordered and he said he didn’t like cous cous. I remember differently from out last visit but I didn’t say anything. Of course once the food arrived, guess who kept eating my cous cous??

The filet mignon was very tender and I really enjoyed the marinade on it. It did seem like the brochette entrees were smaller looking than the tagine entrees.

My other friend ordered the merguez (lamb+ beef sausage) brochettes. I thought the sausages were very flavorful and you could taste the lamb.

I really wanted to try the dessert, but with how busy it was that night, I decided to wait until next time we visit.

Despite how busy it was, the staff was still really friendly. We will just need to avoid coming here on a Saturday next time.