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Zizou will celebrate its one year anniversary with a summery patio party

June 5, 2025

Most restaurants emphasize a curated online presence, paired with a website that showcases their cuisine, but French-Moroccan eatery Zizou isn’t taking a traditional approach.

“We don’t really know what the purpose of having a website is,” said co-owner and founder Maati Zoutina in a Zoom interview. “It’s not some political stand or anything. We just don’t need it. We’re in 2025, you can reserve from Instagram now.”

Zoutina’s response echoes a laissez-faire attitude that has proven successful for the Lincoln Heights restaurant, which continues to attract patrons through social media, French-Moroccan family recipes and an aesthetically pleasing interior design that flows seamlessly through their plant-filled patio exteriors.

Zizou will celebrate its first anniversary on Thursday, June 12, with DJ sets from Cassandra Dalí, Mathieu Schreyer, and a special guest. Zoutina said the day will be a celebration of food, music, and dancing with people who have been a part of their journey so far, like Mathieu, who is part of their revolving live music series.

“Expect to dance and enjoy a cheerful moment with friends,” Zoutina said. “It’s just going to be one of those nights of entertainment, but a little more intense in terms of dancing and partying together.”

An exterior shot of the patio at the French-Moroccan restaurant Zizou in Lincoln Heights. (Photo by Jorden DeGaetano)

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An exterior shot of the patio at the French-Moroccan restaurant Zizou in Lincoln Heights. (Photo by Jorden DeGaetano)

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Zoutina and his business partner, Boris Macquin, opened Zizou last June, but the project had been eight years in the making, with the first four years primarily spent bouncing around concept plans. In January 2020, the two Frenchmen began planning to open a hip, modern restaurant.

The 2000-square-foot space was a former Salvadoran eatery that contained unpermitted add-ons and structures, meaning the new owners had to spend four years gutting and rebuilding the entire restaurant at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Luckily, Zoutina had a background in interior design as an architect, which allowed the duo to craft a design that fit their vision for Zizou. While the new space retained the footprint, height, and general layout of the original building, the interior and exterior designs were meticulously curated to evoke the style of Moroccan riads.

The interior features colorful yellow, green, and red zellige tiles with a variety of patterns and textures, all hand-selected in Morocco and shipped over with other décor items, which span large areas of the restaurant’s walls and floor. The partners also created their own lamps, surfaces, and other items to help balance the design, complemented by circular lights and framed posters written in Arabic or French.

The exteriors utilize foliage and other plants to create a charming atmosphere of earthy modernity, featuring a terracotta-toned planter that can also serve as seating, intermixed with mid-century-style chairs and stools, which pair well with decorative Moroccan tables.

Macquin, a sound designer and Foley artist, and Zoutina, a general lover of good tunes, both agreed they also wanted to center music in their design. The first thing they installed was two large wooden speakers, supported by vertical, straight-stack bricks, that are housed on the spacious lounge patio, which has become the restaurant’s core, where patrons dance and congregate.

Zoutina said that their musical choices are an intentional reading of the vibe, crowd and day of the week. Fridays tend to have a more groovy and funky sound while Sundays channel a more calm ambiance.

“Having a great restaurant is a mix of a lot of things,” he said. “We enjoy music a lot and we want our restaurant to be a place where you can enjoy the food, music and space. The ambiance and the space at Zizou came with the help of our backgrounds. What’s always been the hardest for us is the cooking and the kitchen part.”

Zoutina and Macquin, who don’t have a background in cooking, created their menu based on what they knew best: family recipes. Some of those items feature the chicken tagine with apricot and almond that Zoutina said is the most frequently ordered item.

Other dishes include the Moroccan salad with heirloom tomatoes, charred bell peppers, cucumber, and red onion; a veggie-heavy couscous; spinach puff pastry; steak frites; Provencal stew with mixed vegetables; and mussels marinière. They only serve one dessert, the apple tarte tatin, but he said they have it down just the way they want it.

The restaurant also serves brunch on Sundays, where patrons can savor a latte and enjoy baghrir (Moroccan pancakes) topped with orange blossom raw honey and mint, as well as a melty croque monsieur (a ham and cheese sandwich) that, when paired with their soundtracked patio, evokes a summer morning in Europe.

Zizou also offers a list of rotating wines from France, Chile, Spain, Croatia, and Greece that vary from season to season, but may also change week to week. Zoutina said that their list is designed to encourage locals to try European flavors they may not have tried elsewhere, which is why the eatery offers wine by the glass.

“We try to focus on having a variety of things that connect with our food, especially with the Moroccan spices,” he said.

As summer approaches for Zizou’s first anniversary, Zoutina said he and his team have been proud of what they’ve accomplished so far, but noted that there is still room for growth.

“We hope to improve the music, food and the ambience,” he said. “We want to bring new artists and make the place feel warmer. We are also working on extending the back patio, as it’s definitely one of our strengths. In terms of food, we are continually striving to enhance our kitchen and collaborate on new pop-ups with various chefs, to hopefully introduce more cultural influences to our menu. We are going to try to improve a little bit of those elements every day.”

Find it: 2425 Daly St., Los Angeles.

Zizou will celebrate its one year anniversary with a summery patio party Orange County Register

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Zizou will celebrate its one year anniversary with a summery patio party

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