This new food cart will bring lamb sandwiches from the streets of Morocco to Tucson

There’s nothing like the night market of Marrakech, Morocco, in Tucson, but there could be. La Merguez, a soon-to-open pop-up slinging Moroccan sandwiches, is bringing us one food cart closer.

You can imagine the legendary bazaar when you’re perusing Tucson's Tanque Verde Swap Meet, ducking into a shop made of corrugated steel to buy armadillo boots or examining the retro appliances laid out on a Mexican blanket, eating spicy cacahuetes from a cup you bought from a woman at a folding table.

You can feel it in the way people spill out into backyards and avenues in the heat shelter of a summer night. String lights slung between mesquites might be the closest we get to the illuminated stalls and ornate lanterns signature to Morocco — unless you’ve picked up a star-shaped tin lamp, dotted with marbles, from a shop in Tubac or Mexico. Tucson’s climate is similar to North Africa, down to the land’s arid color scheme, the penetrating sunshine and the relief of the monsoon.

The missing element is the physical and cultural structure of the bazaar: pedestrian-friendly streets, the organizing principle to collect ourselves centrally rather than sprawl farther apart.

La Merguez is a street food vendor looking to bring people together in the style of a night market, to create another portal where a different place seems possible here. The cart will sell sandwiches made with Khboz, a semolina bread baked by pop-up Holy Focaccia, and filled with the eponymous lamb patty, chicken, halloumi or a vegan veggie option. For dessert, we’ll share a triangle of a Briwat, made with phyllo, filled with cheese and dipped in honey.

“The halloumi is definitely not traditional to Morocco, but it’s something we’d like to dance with,” co-owner Zak Boucetta said. “[The] typical sandwich in Morocco has the harissa tomato base, the lamb, courgettes or zucchini — a kind of zucchini — some cooked leeks. Usually you could add some peppers, some toum, some garlic sauce and aioli ... and my personal favorite, it’s stuffed with French fries.”

“This is a more bumped up version,” he said, playing with local Sonoran ingredients and other tastes he loves. “But still respecting the traditional merguez base.”

La Merguez is currently waiting on city inspection. They hope to open by April 21, the last night of Ramadan, the celebratory Eid al-Fitr. After they’re established, La Merguez will be parked outside of Che’s Lounge, 350 N. Fourth Ave., three nights a week.

The two men behind the food cart came up with the idea on Zak’s patio, after sharing a few beers and cooking for each other. They met as neighbors and forged their friendship in the kitchen and on the patio under mesquite trees.

One night, Zak had recently brought back harissa from Morocco, where he grew up. Jeremy Kneller-Hernandez, the second partner behind La Merguez, loves harissa but had never had it like that. “[Zak] brought it back straight from Morocco. I had never tasted harissa like that. I was like, oh my God, we don’t even know what it is back here,” Jeremy said.

“When we first got here, we realized it was post-pandemic. Jeremy, growing up here, told me that there’s this very energetic Tucson. Let’s see if we can bring some energy back, with respect to what the city has brought. The city has a lot of energy, a lot of culture, a collage of different ethnicities,” Zak said.

Both Zak and Jeremy will continue to work full-time on top of running La Merguez, Zak as an architect and Jeremy as a restaurant operational manager. But they aren’t daunted by the demanding extracurricular; instead, it gives them both a chance to create something for themselves, rather than for a bigger company.

When Zak was supporting his partner, Rachael Colasanto, as she opened Holy Focaccia, he said something that continues in the La Merguez project today: “I told Rachael, it should always be fun. A fun, naive, creative project — not chichi, nothing over the top, something expressive about it.”

Yet, neither Zak nor Jeremy is naive to the notorious grind of the restaurant industry.

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Zak grew up in his dad’s Vietnamese restaurant in Tangier, Morocco. “It was a Vietnamese restaurant, because my dad thought a Vietnamese restaurant would do well in Tangier. It was something the city was missing,” Zak said. “That’s what inspired us here — we wanted to add something different.”

Jeremy, meanwhile, has been working in restaurants in Tucson and Portland, Oregon, for two decades. While both partners will cook and contribute to the business end of things, it’s Jeremy who has experience opening a restaurant.

Restaurateur Nathan Ares gave him a chance to work at Prep & Pastry when Jeremy came back from Portland, in early stages of recovery.

“I was a recovering addict for quite some time and I think I just have to be driven, constantly, you know ... Nathan A., he’s my mentor, you know, he took me in as a busser and when I was just getting clean, getting on my feet again and he gave me a chance,” Jeremy said. “I just grew and grew and grew and just literally worked and worked and worked and learned how to balance out with life, and, you know, live again,” he said.

When it comes to navigating the economic side, paperwork and bureaucracy from the city, Jeremy’s experience helps the team navigate the inevitable unexpected — an advantage that might read as minor to those who have never tried opening a new food concept.

“I don’t know if it’s the chaos inside of me, but I’m most comfortable when the restaurant is going down in flames. It takes a few of us who are OK with that feeling to get us through it,” Jeremy said.

All of La Merguez’s food will be halal, including the meats that the pair are sourcing from local markets like Al Basha. Jeremy isn’t Moroccan or Muslim — his mom is Jewish, from Queens, New York. “We’d have to go to a specific store to get that Kosher meat, Kosher food. There’s a gap in that market [in Tucson],” he said.

We have a few halal restaurants: Al Madina Halal Kitchen, which started as a ghost kitchen, or Caravan Grill. Considering how extensive halal food can be, though, crossing countries and cuisines across the world, Tucson could use many, many more. La Merguez will be capturing one tiny part of Moroccan food.

Rachael is baking the Khboz to Zak’s memory of what Khboz should be like. The recipe has gone through several iterations. When I sampled the menu a few weeks ago, they hadn’t quite landed on the right amount of protein in their flour, but they were close.

That’s what La Merguez is, tinkering with these recipes until it tastes like home. “I miss merguez sandwiches,” Zak said. “It’s like, for me, it’s also, I miss it.”

“The first steps are playful and are meant to be enjoyed. We don’t want to make it stressful — we want to have fun with it,” Zak said.

“We hope the Tucson public likes it, too,” Zak said.

“[But] if not, we’ll keep making sandwiches for ourselves,” said Jeremy.

Keep up with La Merguez on Instagram for more details on when they'll be open for business.