Fez — In Astoria, a plate of couscous or lamb tagine is increasingly becoming part of New York’s neighborhood food story.

Two Moroccan-American women chefs, Siham Bourhane and Touria Lamtahaf, are among the people giving that story greater visibility from kitchens in Queens.

Bourhane runs Moroccan Bites by Siham on Steinway Street, while Lamtahaf operates Dar Lbahja nearby on 30th Avenue.

A recent New York immigrant-food guide highlighted both women as chef-owners helping refresh Astoria’s Moroccan restaurant scene.

Moroccan food inside Little Egypt

Astoria’s Steinway Street is widely associated with its Egyptian, Levantine, and wider Arab communities.

Moroccan immigrants represent a much smaller part of New York’s population, but Moroccan businesses have gradually carved out their own spaces within that environment.

Moroccan Bites by Bourhane began as a smaller operation before Bourhane moved into a larger location at 28-44 Steinway Street.

Local Queens reporting documented the restaurant as a family project built around Bourhane’s cooking, supported by her husband and children.

The current menu keeps familiar Moroccan dishes at its center.

Chicken tagine with olives and preserved lemon, lamb with prunes and apricots, couscous, pastilla, bread, and less commonly seen dishes provide New Yorkers with a broader picture of Moroccan cooking than the handful of dishes usually associated with the country abroad.

A few blocks away, Dar Lbahja follows a similarly home-centered approach.

The restaurant is led by Marrakech-born Touria Lamtahaf and has built a reputation around dishes including tangia, tagines, pastilla, couscous, and Moroccan desserts.

Dar Lbahja came into wider public view in December 2025 when then New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani joined Moroccan supporters there to watch Morocco’s AFCON opener against Comoros.

Food as a gathering place

These restaurants do more than serve Moroccan dishes.

For members of New York’s Moroccan diaspora, they can become spaces where language, football, food, and community briefly recreate something familiar.

That role became particularly visible around major Morocco football matches, when restaurants in Astoria became gathering points for supporters.

At the same time, American diners are encountering dishes that are less frequently represented within New York’s enormous restaurant landscape.

Recent New York dining coverage has pointed to both Dar Lbahja and Moroccan Bites by Siham when discussing where to find Moroccan food in the city.

Their presence also complicates the traditional image of the immigrant restaurant as a male-dominated family business.

Here, Moroccan women are not simply preserving recipes privately. They are chefs and business owners putting those recipes into one of the most competitive food cities in the world.

Astoria may be thousands of kilometers from Marrakech or Casablanca, but kitchens like these show how Moroccan culture can take root in a new city without losing the taste of home.