When Sam met Sam

They shared mutual interests. Their passion was cooking and in particular, they favored Mediterranean cooking. They were quite obsessed with Moorish culture. They loved Spain, Morocco and the Maghreb. They truly enjoyed the sun-matured tastes of Mediterranean food, which was quite exotic to the British palate in the 1990's. The moment they met, their destiny was bound together almost instantly. They had one more thing in common: They shared the same name. Their close friends and relatives called them both Sam; if that was not enough, they had the same surname. Even their birthdays were almost identical: One was on September 21st, the other September 22nd (though not in the same year). There surely was something magical in the crossing of their paths. They both started to work as cooks at the famous Eagle, the first gastropub in London. This is how Samuel Clark and Samantha Clark met. What happened next? They married and cooked happily ever after? 

Not that simple, of course. After getting married, they hired a van and set out on a three-month journey through Spain, Morocco and the Sahara. They had already decided on opening their own place, just a few steps from where they both worked. Meanwhile, their future restaurant was practically a hole in the ground at London's Exmouth Market. Their partners it built while they were away, and on their way back home, the restaurant was ready to be opened. Inevitably, with the strong western Mediterranean and Moorish influence in their kitchen, the name of the restaurant was chosen accordingly: Moro. This is how the story of Moro begins.

The restaurant instantly attracted the interest of the young and thirsty palates of the London crowd, ready to explore new tastes. In 1997, the year they opened, they received...