This was the defining moment. Ten years ago, noted interior designer Samad Naamad fulfills his dream, creating Moroccan restaurant Tangierino, in Charlestown. Opening night, his chef is a no show. No cook? No problem. Samad trades suit coat for apron, takes over the kitchen.

Fast forward: Samad is voted one of the hottest chefs in Boston. Casablanca comes to  Bunker Hill, and business booms. And keeps booming. Samad adds a cigar bar and a multi-room lounge to his nightspot. And, oh yeah, on the side he produces, directs and stars in his own feature films….

He’s up early, working in his home office, then off to the restaurant until about three o’clock in the morning—your typical fifteen-hour day—but the swarthy, dimpled designer/chef/actor/producer/director/entrepreneur doesn’t feel any of it is work. There is a saying in Moroccan: Ahlem mina khale—dreams come from the heart. Samad is living his dreams. He loves it all. The intimate, original Tangierino upstairs, with its African mahogany bar, the dining room, the Marrakesh salon, the wine bar; Koullshi, the new space downstairs, the Bedouin room where you sit on cushions on the floor, smoking molasses tobacco from shisha pipes. Then there’s the food. Try the tuna tartar appetizer, with sweet mango, lemon and 40 Moroccan spices, or the cucumber with cilantro and olive oil and guacamole. Or the Sultan’s Kadra entrée: roast lamb, breaded and lightly fried eggplant, goat cheese, a mix of African and French cooking.
   
Samad left Morocco in 1988 to study business in the United States. After four years of school he got a job at Morgan Stanley, but realized—really quickly—that the cubicle world was not for him. He quit after one day.His boss, he says, just looked at him and asked if he was crazy, throwing away a career. But Samad knew he was had to shed the status quo to reach the Renaissance man within. He taught himself jewelry making and interior design and followed his passions. As the restaurant grew, so did his artistic vision. In 2005 he produced a film, “Welcome to Hollywood,” and in 2007, produced and starred in “The Dream Shadow,” scheduled to open at the Brattle Theater in February.

He’s thirty-six, single, and, these days, he says he’s all about hospitality. Americans who walk into Tangierino and Koullshi and experience the wonderful colors and scents and designs think they’re in Morocco. Moroccans who come in think they’re home, crows Samad. And he is there, creating an escape, following his dreams. When you believe in something with your heart, the universe believes in it with you, he says. Ahlem mina khaleb.

www.tangierino.com