This year I took a prebirthday trip to Marrakech (which I nearly didn’t make), a place I’ve been dying to visit for the past 5 years. Like I do with every trip, I research all the fabulous places there are to eat and visit beforehand so I have some sort of structure to my short trip.
What to expect
Morocco specialises in tangines, couscous, skewers and olives four staple dishes you will find in any menu and of course mint tea. A lot of restaurants around the souks and where you can lunch tend to have a rooftop terrace which is something us tourists absolutely live for (I know we did). If you’re thinking to play it safe and go for a tagine, I can tell young that as expected, different restaurants cook different dishes better than others. For example we had couscous in one restaurant that was a bit dry but then when we ordered it at dinner it had loads of flavours. Therefore I recommend asking the waiter what is good at the particular place you are eating at. As expected alcoholic a bit pricer as they are a muslim country
What I loved
I LOVED THE MINT TEA. The food in Morocco is generally very cheap but please do not try and haggle in restaurants, that is not a thing. I loved the fact that most places had a rooftop because how else will you enjoy 25 degree weather in November and make everyone back home jealous. Dinner time is when the real fun happens though.. The Moroccans really know how to entertain. I’m pretty sure that every dinner we had came with a belly dancing show as a minimum and our most expensive meal which was about £30pp on the final night had 5 shows throughout our dinner! I feel like we don’t have enough of this back in the UK because I was living for it.
What I didn’t like
I personally liked most of the meals but naturally some stood out compared to others. What I did really miss was ice cubes. Ice cubes in my glass before I showered in my coca-cola from the bottle. Ice however may leave you bed bound for days so better safe than sorry. Also, the bread tends to be very dry in this country and olives feature heavily as predinner snacks (they didn’t charge for this).
Now you know a brief background to food in Morocco here’s all the places I had a chance to try
Atay Cafe
Kicking off our weekend for lunch at Atay Cafe which I found on trip advisor which is a restaurant/cafe with a terrace within the souks in the Medina area. As Marrakech is one of those places where I can’t use 4G, finding it was extremely difficult so be prepared that if you’re gonna get directions/a guide/ human souk taxi – you will have to pay.
I recommend ordering the lemon chicken tagine, my sister got it and it was delicious. I don’t think they serve alcohol here but the smoothie goes down a treat. The couscous is a huge portion but I felt a little dry so stick with the tangines here.
Café Arabe
We only stopped off here for a quite vino and cocktail. The wine here is reasonably priced with a bottle being around 160dh. It’s quire nice for groups and also gave us a lovely view of the sunset.
Le Tanjia
This was a recommendation from @stephyttravels and it was a great way to round off a very very long day. La Tanjia is a restaurant that goes over two floors and candle lit. The service here is absolutely impeccable and the food was divine. They also have belly dancing which starts at 9.30pm as some light dinner entertainment.
I played it safe with a tagine here. Me and my sister shared the fish and beef tagine. The fish was delicious although didn’t have loads of meat on it and a very big bit of bone. The beef however was incredible, so tender and fell right apart. Other great dishes were the chicken tagine with almonds and I was told the skewers here were great. The white wine also goes down super quickly.
Dinner in tent as pert of excursion
Sadly I cannot find the exclusion we booked for the second day but when I do I will share the details in a later post because it was fantastic.Our day of activities finished with dinner in a tent with entertainment and music. We had a fantastic salad/dip selection with some bread (not super dry), this salad was incredible and if you mixed all the different dips together and whacked it on some bread – delicious. We also had a huge tagine to share and finished off which some desserts which were basically biscuits but the mint tea was fabulous. The entertainment here was top notch with a band, belly dancer (who also taught you some moves) and general group dancing. Be prepared for a great time.
Lotus Club
Initially we had left it too late to book a different restaurant so were recommended Lotus Club but thank god because this place was fantastic! This was our fancy end of trip birthday dinner but it exceeded all of our expectations. During our dinner we saw 3 dance shows including an interpretation of Chicago’s cell block tango, a magician who maybe my skin crawl he was so good and belly dancers of course! The food here was definitely the most expensive of our meals but all of great quality and mixed cuisines.
I opted for the beef with truffle mash which was amazin, the lamb shoulder and sushi were also hugely impressive. Prawns were a little on the small side but the chocolate mousse I got as a birthday treat was sublime. OH and if you’re getting any starter, get the octopus and humus.
Other places I was recommended:
- La Mamounia
- Comptoir Darna
- La Trattoria
- Le Jardin Secret
Let me know if yo have any more for next time!
Wear Juti Eats 