In Arabic, "Kan Zaman" means "Once upon a time," and chefs Youssef Dakroub and Kamal Jemmari have teamed up to offer a taste of some of the world’s earliest cuisines, from Morocco and Lebanon, to diners in downtown Honolulu.

Given the chefs’ roots in those countries, I had high hopes for this restaurant. I was dreaming it would match the excellence of a restaurant I’ve never forgotten, Ghita’s, that was once in the space that most recently housed The Whole Ox Deli, now Cocina. I dreamed that someone might be able to duplicate the chicken and preserved lemon dish once cooked up by the late chef Toufik.

Alas. This is Middle Eastern cuisine for beginners. It’s OK but, to my taste, too bland. Which is not necessarily a bad thing in Hawaii, where an abundance of the cumin, cinnamon, turmeric and other spices common to the cuisine tends to put many diners off. The toned-down tactic is already paying off. The restaurant has tons of fans and is packed day and night, perhaps benefiting from traffic that might have gone to Indigo before it closed.

The space, once home to Cafe Joy, has a courtyard in back if you prefer the open air to four walls. The room is warm and pretty, done up in the teal and burnt orange ochers of the "Red City" or "Rose City" of Marrakesh, with tables dressed with small Moroccan lanterns, marked by colored glass and cutout metalwork.

You’re immediately offered a choice of hot ($6 per pot) or iced mint tea ($3), the hot tea poured from high in silver teapots.

The menu starts with a Western-style a la carte mezza that includes choices of hummus, the staple chickpea puree ($6.95), and smoky, flavorful baba ganoush ($7.95), a mash-up of charcoal-grilled eggplant, tahini, lemon juice and olive oil. The baba ganoush is one of the best things on the menu. Falafel, the fried chickpea balls ($6.50), is hard and dry. It doesn’t live up to the fluffy lightness of Da Falafel King’s. Better than the falafel were french fries served with a garlic and sumac aioli ($6.50).

In spite of the compact menu, there are separate lunch and dinner offerings. Comparing them will tempt you to return for the dishes you couldn’t try at a previous meal. 

Lunch is a time for sandwiches, including the falafel ($8.95) and lamb kebab ($9.95). The kofta ($10.95) is their version of a hamburger, ground beef with cheese and smoked paprika oil. The one thing I would come back for is the merguez sandwich ($11.95), grilled lamb sausage with tomatoes, cucumber and the heat of harissa sauce. This was nowhere near as hot as harissa I’ve tried elsewhere, but this was the only dish that stepped out of tepid mode.

At night the tagines, or stews, offered the restaurant an opportunity to shine and stand out from the crowd by playing with the addition of apricots, dates, figs and nuts to the table, but the tagines offered here are more basic and homespun. There was not much to distinguish the lamb tagine, a shank plopped over white beans, from any other American contemporary restaurant serving a lamb shank over white beans. Lamb couscous ($22.95) has more flavor, the shank served over the salad of the starch, dotted with bits of carrot, pumpkin, zucchini, tomatoes and chickpeas.

The beef of shish kebabs ($17.95) also hinted at the cinnamon and spices expected from this cuisine, but the gristly meat was so tough I had to cut each cube into 1/4-inch squares for a manageable chew that wouldn’t go on for several minutes.

Chicken taouk ($15.95) might be a better choice, the grilled chicken far more chewable, and served with an assertive yogurt-garlic sauce.

Many are raving about the cheesecake with orange sauce, but to me it doesn’t capture the essence of the fruit, and baklava ($3.50) that should have layers of crisp phyllo was soggy.

On the plus side there’s no corkage fee for B.Y.O.B.

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Nadine Kam’s restaurant reviews are conducted anonymously and paid for by the Star-Advertiser. Reach her at nkam@staradvertiser.com.