Miami

Being thoughtful, clever, and entertaining for the five minutes it takes to get a phone number is one thing, but who's got the juice to be all those things for three straight hours on a date? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Don't entertain, distract, at Ta-Zin.

Ta-Zin's a Moroccan dinner theater presenting nightly shows in a space that feels like a shadily posh North African festival hall: black velvet booths overflowing with pillows, rustic whitewashed walls and Moorish arched windows, a cloth tent ceiling, and traditional lamps perforated to send shards of light across the “tent” surface. The garish acts cover the masculine with a dervish-like “Tannoura” dancer spinning himself into a giant technicolored frisbee, performing eye-popping feats of whirling trickery, and occasionally walking on broken glass/fire and lying down on a bed of nails; and the feminine, with belly dancers who jiggle center-stage before spending some time at each table (tip them suggestively to make your date jealous...of her friend's date). Moroccan cuisine includes pastry “cigars” filled with vermicelli and spiced veggies, chicken, fish, or lamb; grilled kebabs; snapper, king fish, mahi, and tilapia; big bowls of cous-cous with chicken, spicy Moroccan sausage, or lamb; and tagines (ceramic hotpots) filled with lemon chicken, sweet lamb, or brothy fish balls. Ha.

Booze is (mostly French) wine & beer for now, plus champagne in both magnums and jeroboams -- because when conversation fails, there's no escape route quite like an artillery shell of bubbly.