AURORA | If chance had turned in another direction, Chakib Marrakchi might now be a doctor practicing internal medicine in Morocco.
Instead, he is happily celebrating almost 20 years of dishing bastilla, couscous, falafel and linguine at Cafe Paprika.
His long road to Aurora by way of Senegal took him through a series of now-legendary Denver metro restaurants, although never in the kitchens.
Marrakchi grew up in the inland city of Fez near the Atlas Mountains. “In can be 95 degrees in Fez but you get up in the mountains and it’s 75,” he said.
“Exactly like here: If it’s too hot you head to Vail.”
At home his mom did all the cooking. “Mom was a real good cook. She made breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks every day,” he said.
“Every single house in town made couscous on Friday to eat after going to the mosque.”
While he sometimes helped her, his culinary revelation came in the city of Rabat where his older brother was studying medicine. “I would go to visit whenever I had a vacation,” Marrakchi said.
“My brother would invite people to his apartment and feed them, so I watched him cook. When he was too busy he would tell me to cook something. That’s how I learned.”
After graduating from high school, he headed to Daccar, Senegal to attend medical school for three years but then hit a roadblock. “I was ready to go to finish my education overseas but they all said I would have to do those years all over again,” Marrakchi said.
He decided he wanted a different life and eventually moved to Denver where restaurants were the easiest place for him to find a job. He worked in the dining rooms of Marlowe’s, Pierre Wolfe’s Quorum Restaurant, and at Strings under the late Noel Cunningham. Finally, he managed Radek Cerny’s European Cafe in Boulder.
“I was very good at selling wine even though I’m a Muslim. I’ve never had a sip of wine in my life,” he said. Marrakchi memorized information on the wines and listened to wine sellers talk about which wines went with which dishes.
He married in 1987 and bought a house in Broomfield. By 1993, he wanted to spend time with his family and do something on his own.
“My wife said: ‘You’re a good cook. You should open a restaurant,’” he said.
She also came up with the name.
“In 1993, nobody here knows too much about Moroccan food. My wife said: ‘How about naming it after a spice like paprika?’ ”
That way, she reasoned, if it didn’t work out as a Moroccan place he could change it to Middle Eastern or some other cuisine.
Marrakchi said his menu reflects the food served in big cities like Fez. “I go towards the food where I grew up,” he said. It is a little more cosmopolitan than other parts of the country reflecting the myriad influences that washed over the North African nation. That’s why you’ll find French-influenced apricot chicken, Italian pasta dishes, Middle Eastern falafel as well as traditional Moroccan tagines, bastilla, and couscous.
Tucked away in a strip mall, the small eatery is colorfuly decorated with wall murals. Cafe Paprika’s menu includes grilled and skewered lamb, merguez beef sausages, gyros, lamb shanks, and baklava layered with nuts and honey.
A practical restaurateur, Marrakchi serves a fresh-ground burger at lunch seasoned with harissa sauce, herbs, cumin and, of course, paprika. “They are very popular so I keep serving them,” he said with a shrug.
Early on, Marrakchi hired chefs who wanted to alter or “improve” the recipes and make their own mark on the menu. “I told them they had to make it Chakib-y style, the way I cook. That’s how I want it,” he said.
Since 1997 Cafe Paprika’s co-chef Abdellah Benbrahim has been running the kitchen Chakib-y style. That means they make almost everything from scratch using imported seasonings. For the Morrocan pie or bastilla, they grind several kinds of nuts and adds saffron chicken and eggs to the filling. Instead of the usual prepared mix, they soak and grind garbanzo beans to make crunchy falafel. The meat they serve is halal.
The duo has survived two decades of economic ups and downs by doing almost everything: cooking, bussing tables, washing dishes and ordering food. Family members and friends help out on occasion.
With his kids in college, Chakib Marrakchi said he’s happy with the way things turned out. He plans to continue offering cooking classes and is cautiously investigating the possibility of opening a second cafe serving a fast-casual version of his menu.
After all these years in Aurora, he has a devoted group of regulars. Many are Arabic fans of the cuisine. “Most of my customers are American Jewish and Israeli-born families,” he said. This spiritual-gastronomic convergence makes perfect sense to him.
“This is the food they grew up with too, and they like that I don’t serve pork or alcohol,” he said.
“They understand that halal is just like kosher.”
What to order from the menu at Cafe Paprika
Bastilla (bass-tea-la): A phyllo-crusted savory dinner pie with various fillings, topped with powdered sugar and ground cinnamon. Cafe Paprika’s versions are filled with either ground saffron chicken mixed with egg, onions and nuts, or seafood with vermicelli noodles.
Falafel (fa-lah-fell): Crispy deep-fried fritters made of ground chickpeas flavored with cumin and other spices.
Kefta (keff-tah): Ground beef and lamb, flavored with spices, shaped into long patties and grilled.
Harira (ha–rear–rah): Tomato and lentil soup flavored with spices and herbs.
Chicken tajine (tah-zheen): A hot dish made with meat and vegetables, cooked with liquid and spices in a closed North African clay container called a tajine.
Couscous (koos-koos): Rolled wheat semolina balls steamed over an herby broth and fluffed up before serving with meats or vegetables.
Cafe Paprika
13160 E. Mississippi Ave., Aurora
303-755-4150; cafepaprika.com