When chef Samir Afrit came to the United States from Casablanca in 1999, he didn’t know how to cook. At all. It’s said you can get anything in New York, but Moroccan food prepared just like Mom’s proved elusive. So Samir did the next best thing. He set out to learn the staple recipes one by one, with his mom teaching him centuries-old techniques via decidedly modern technology: Skype. Samir streamed his mother into his own kitchen so they could cook side by side, even if thousands of miles apart. Their first challenge? Couscous, a fine-grained pasta made of semolina and the national dish of Morocco.
Once Samir mastered couscous, he moved onto harira, a hearty tomato, lentil, and chickpea soup typically eaten for dinner during the holy month of Ramadan. After harira, Samir progressed to tagines, slow-cooked Moroccan stews prepared in a conical earthenware pot. With each recipe, his confidence increased, as did his love of cooking.
Soon Samir and his now-wife, began hosting dinner parties, at which he was known for his use of bold and unique flavors like sharp Moroccan green olives and preserved lemons. “Our house had become like Mecca for the group,” he says. One night a friend asked Samir to cater a rehearsal dinner. “Listen, I know how to cook for you guys, but I don’t know how to do catering,” he recounts. Samir’s friend wore down his resistance, and he pulled together a successful meal for thirty people. From that first party came more catering requests. “From the third party, I really enjoy it. I really had fun. You go—you do the shopping. You spend the whole day just cooking this and that. So I start thinking to take it to the next step as a business.”
With a small budget, opening a restaurant “was impossible … it was not a plan.” In 2009, food trucks were booming in the city, and Samir liked the concept. “You cook and you see people. It’s not like a restaurant where you’re in the kitchen and nobody knows who is cooking and whatever. And I like to talk to people. So the food truck was going to be the best option for me.” Samir quit his job managing a souvenir shop and devoted all of his attention to get the food truck up and running.
The Department of Health capped the number of food vending licenses at 3,100 in 1983 and the waiting list to get a license from the city is years long. While the city officially issues two-year permits to vendors for $200, the black market value of the permits is upward of $20,000. Just locating a license can be a challenge. “The license was the most difficult thing to find … there is no one who is going to give you that answer.” Samir paid $2,000 just to get an introduction to someone with an available permit and who was willing to enter into a partnership so he could vend. While it took three to four months to find the license, getting a truck was much easier. Samir got his on the first try on eBay. “I was not fan of eBay. I never get anything on eBay. The first thing I get on eBay was a truck,” he says.
Months of work went into preparing the Comme Ci Comme Ça truck. Like Samir, the design is bold, colorful, and, most of all, playful. Still some of Samir’s Moroccan friends were skeptical. When he told them, “I would like to do the couscous and bring it to the street,” they said he was crazy, that it wasn’t possible. And maybe they were right. With traditional couscous, the meat is cooked in the broth. With limited space on a truck, how could Samir offer more than just a few things on his menu? But Samir was not deterred. “I live in New York City. I feel myself New Yorker. I say, let’s do a little switch to convert it for the truck.” By cooking the couscous on the side in vegetable broth and the meats on the grill, he could use the same couscous base for vegetarians as for carnivores.