Eating Marrakech - one dish at a time - IgoUgo Marrakech Journal

Eating and Drinking in Marrakech

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There are some countries that fill me with a sense of culinary expectation so much that my mouth is almost watering before I get off the plane. Sadly Morocco is not one of those countries. I don't eat meat and haven't done so for over 20 years and the local approach to that is one of acceptance - "OK, she doesn't want meat, we won't force her" which is a step or two better than you'll find in China where it seems to be "The woman is crazy, let's sneak some dead animals into her food when she's looking the other way". Whilst nobody will treat you like you're crazy for choosing not to eat meat, they won't go out of their way to tempt or delight your taste buds. Instead they just give you exactly the sam...Read More

There are some countries that fill me with a sense of culinary expectation so much that my mouth is almost watering before I get off the plane. Sadly Morocco is not one of those countries. I don't eat meat and haven't done so for over 20 years and the local approach to that is one of acceptance - "OK, she doesn't want meat, we won't force her" which is a step or two better than you'll find in China where it seems to be "The woman is crazy, let's sneak some dead animals into her food when she's looking the other way". Whilst nobody will treat you like you're crazy for choosing not to eat meat, they won't go out of their way to tempt or delight your taste buds. Instead they just give you exactly the same as everyone else but minus the meat. This mostly means that you'll get a lot of over-cooked potatoes and carrots and so much bland couscous that you'll never want to see the stuff again.

I do eat fish and seafood – but unless you are out at the coast I'd suggest to exercise some caution especially when the weather is hot. Don't go crazy as a bit of canned tuna on your pizza or in your sandwich is unlikely to do you any harm but anything that's not frozen or tinned could give your guts a workout that they might not want.

Meat eaters will most likely find that the Morrocan system of slow cooking in a clay tajine makes delicious and juicy meals out of what look to me like the cheap cuts. Certainly the rest of our party seemed more than happy with the available food. Lamb and chicken are the most typical meats and you'll never see pork and beef is rare.

Every must-do list for Marrakech will tell you to eat kebabs in the Jemaa el Fna square after dark. Most likely they'll also tell you to keep a close hand on your wallet to avoid pickpockets and to steer clear of the snake charmers, monkey handlers and transvestite belly dancers unless you want to be asked rather aggressively for money. I've not eaten in the square since there's not a lot of choice that's not meat-based but mostly because I find the place too crowded and intimidating. I do however love to stop and buy fresh orange juice each time I pass through. The colourful juice sellers stalls are lined up around the edge of the square and 4 dirhams (about 30p) will buy you a glass of the juiciest, sweetest, most tangy 'straight from the orange' juice you'll find anywhere. The same juice in a sit down cafe in central Marrakech will cost around 15-25 dirhams but still be excellent.

Bottled water is easily available and I've not heard of anyone getting fake or refilled water bottles. On the square the juice stalls sell a large bottle for 10 dirhams (about 80 pence) or two small bottles for a similar price. Small shops in the medina will be cheaper and a bottle of water will cost you 10 to 30 dirhams in a restaurant – with the higher prices in the swankier places.

The square and the souks are also filled with stalls selling dried fruits and nuts at good prices. The stall holders will wave apricots or dates at you as you pass and there's no obligation to buy. Nut and sesame seed brittles are often available and are sold by weight and I had an outstanding mille feuille slice off a hand cart for just 2 dirhams which I only bought because I wanted to take a picture of the cakes.

The souks and the central old town district have a lot of small restaurants of the wipe-down table and wipe-down menu type and these offer great value with couscous and tajines from around 30 Dirham (£2.50). You might want to take care to avoid salads or uncooked vegetables but tajines and couscous are generally well cooked. Meat on skewers is cheap and very widely available. If you're sick of the local food which is mostly very bland and tends to be the same whether you go to a cheap dive or a swanky restaurant, you'll also find in Marrakech plenty of pizza and pasta restaurants and in the new town there are lots of very classy European-style restaurants.

If you are staying in a riad or hotel that's not so central you may have less choice open to you locally and in the area around our first riad we were unable to find any restaurants or snack bars at all. You may want to consider eating dinner early before you go back to your accommodation rather than hunting around the labyrinthine streets looking for food later in the evening.

Most riads and all hotels will offer food but with the riads it's best to order earlier in the day if you want to eat that same evening. Many places only have a few rooms and won't have a lot of food in the kitchen if they're not expecting you to eat there. On our first evening we had a pleasant and well cooked meal at our riad but we'd ordered it before we left England.

Breakfasts are large but rather basic. In the three places where we stayed we always received bread, juice and excellent coffee as well as jams and hunny, occasionally a fried egg and often the local thick pancakes or a strange fried pastry whose name I never learned. Cake was also often served for breakfast but don't expect a bit UK or US style hot breakfast. Many riads now offer cookery courses for their guests though it's beyond me why anyone would want to learn to cook such dull food.

Vegetarians should take particular note of the delightful Earth Cafe to the south east of the Jemaa el Fna. It was the first vegetarian/vegan restaurant in the city and I've not heard of any others anywhere else. If you have various food allergies, I'd suggest to take care and consider getting translations done of what your needs are. We travelled around Libya last year with a lady who was a gluten-intollerant vegan and had a laminated card with translations of what she could and couldn't eat.

Food is mostly inexpensive and filling although some of the restaurants in your guidebook may prove to be very expensive. Alcohol is almost always expensive and is not always easy to find. On a previous visit during the holy month of Ramadan, we just decided not to even bother trying to find alcohol although some of the people with us got very good at tracking down international hotel chains where they could buy at vastly inflated prices. If you like to drink spirits, I'd suggest to use your duty free allowance from your home country and fly in with a couple of half litre bottles of your favourite tipple.
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Dar Zellij

Restaurant | "Expensive and Disappointing"

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When we first arrived in Marrakech my husband and I were staying for two nights in one riad whilst my sister, Aileen, and her girlfriend, Joyce, were staying at another nearby. On the night that we arrived we'd all chosen to eat at our riads but on the next day we wanted to eat together. We'd not seen any restaurants in the area where we were staying and the weather was a bit grey and drizzly so we didn't want to go all the way back into the town centre just to find food. My husband accompanied the others back to their riad so he'd know more or less where it was, and whilst there he found a pile of restaurant cards in the lobby of the riad. Dar Zellij caught his eye and when he asked the owner if it w...Read More

Member Rating 2 out of 5 on April 10, 2025

Dar Zellij
Sidi Ben Slimane
Marrakech, Morocco

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Bougainvillea Cafe

Restaurant | "Great Value but Slightly Bland"

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Just around the corner from our Riad was a restaurant called Bougainvilliers which was note-worthy for two reasons; firstly it served good cheap food and secondly it was a landmark on our route because it was the place where we had to turn to head towards the Jemaa el Fna via the souks. We ate at Bougainvilliers twice – once for a late lunch and once for dinner. Obviously we liked it or we wouldn't have gone back a second time.Bougainvilliers is close to the Mouassine mosque in a district of old Marrakech which is to the north and slightly to the east of the Jemaa el Fna. It's just a few doors from a good foreign exchange office and there are plenty of small shops selling both food and sou...Read More

Just around the corner from our Riad was a restaurant called Bougainvilliers which was note-worthy for two reasons; firstly it served good cheap food and secondly it was a landmark on our route because it was the place where we had to turn to head towards the Jemaa el Fna via the souks. We ate at Bougainvilliers twice – once for a late lunch and once for dinner. Obviously we liked it or we wouldn't have gone back a second time.

Bougainvilliers is close to the Mouassine mosque in a district of old Marrakech which is to the north and slightly to the east of the Jemaa el Fna. It's just a few doors from a good foreign exchange office and there are plenty of small shops selling both food and souvenirs close by.

Your first impressions are likely to be that the place is very pink. All of the chairs and sofas in the courtyard are upholsterd in bubble-gum pink mock ostrich leather. It sounds pretty extreme but in the bright light of a Marrakesh sunny day it's not as garish as you'd imagine because everything is so much brighter there. The large courtyard has a beautiful tiled fountain-wall overgrown with Bougainvillia and other climbing plants and large metal lamps are strung up above the courtyard though you'll only notice their dappled, filtered light when the sun goes down in the evening. There are also indoor eating areas that are not surprisingly also very pink and an upper roof terrace which nobody was using during either of our visits. Around the courtyard are several birdcages with canaries which chirped tunefully throughout the day and even though I loved the sound, I couldn't help but feel sad for them trapped in their cages.

For lunch we grabbed a table with two pink sofas in a shady corner. The sofas were comfy if a bit sweaty in the mid day heat but the table was more like a coffee table so it meant you had to lean over to get to your food. The menu is small and simple with mostly salads, sandwiches, panninis, pizzas and the standard traditional dishes of couscous and tagine. We nibbled on the olives and bread basket whilst we decided what to have. Looking around we could see that the portions were going to be generous so we didn't mess around with starters and we probably shouldn't have eaten so much bread. To drink we ordered a couple of diet Cokes, a fat Coke and a cup of coffee.

My sister ordered a Caprese salad (tomatoes and mozarella), her girlfriend asked for a cheese sandwich and hubby and I ordered panninis – his with goat cheese and vegetables and mine with prawns, cheese and roasted red peppers. Luckily we'd picked the only shaded table available so we weren't too frazzled by the time that the food arrived. Every dish was enormous and with the exception of the salad, came with a mound of chips. The cheese sandwich was made with three slices of toasted bread and had cheese on top as well as inside and each of the pannini dishes came with two round breads, about 10 cm in diameter. One would have been plenty and I did feel like a real pig for polishing off both. I blame a childhood of being told to eat up everything on my plate. Whilst the quality was good and the quantity enormous, I found it a bit bland because there was just too much melted cheese which rather swamped the taste of everything else. I find most Moroccan food rather dull so that was not big deal but a bit of chilli sauce or some herbs or even a dash of garlic could have lifted it out of the ordinary. Tony was more than happy with his goat cheese panninis (yes, I have a hubby who is addicted to stinky goat cheese) and by the time we'd finished there wasn't much left on any of the plates and nobody had space for pudding. Each of the main courses had been 50 Dirham and the drinks were 15 Dirhams on top – we each paid just over £5 for our lunches.

On our second to last night we'd had a big blow out meal at another local restaurant so we were in the mood for a bargain on the last night and went back to Bougainvilliers for dinner. I'd asked earlier if they were open in the evening and been told "Yes madame, until about 8.30 or 9 o'clock". I have to admit that when we rolled up to an empty restaurant just after 8 the waitress didn't look entirely pleased to see us and we wondered if she'd been hoping for an early night. As the sun set and the lights came on the place took on a different atmosphere from the day time and within half an hour the courtyard was almost full again. Knowing that people are always wary to enter an empty restaurant, we did wonder whether they'd have had any clients that evening if we'd not gone in first.

We'd learned our lessons about eating too much bread and so we avoided over stuffing ourselves when the waitress brought the bread basket. Tony and I ordered a trio of Moroccan salads to share as a starter and were surprised that there were four although admittedly one of them was so sweet and horrible (a type of sweet tomato 'jam') that we only ate three of them. One of the salads was aubergine dip, another was broad beans and the third was chunks of roasted courgette.

For main courses three of us ordered pizzas (four cheeses, margherita and seafood) and the fourth had kebab skewers. The pizzas were large, very cheesy but a bit like the panninis a few days earlier they didn't taste of all that much. Herbs, garlic, or a bit of spice could easily have raised the bar from ordinary to very tasty and I was a bit disappointed. The amount of prawns, calamari and tuna was good but something was definitely missing. The bill for four of us came to 320 Dirhams (about £25)

I didn't use the loos at the restaurant but everyone else did and proclaimed them to be very clean and Joyce reckoned they had the only toilet roll holder in Morocco (although it wasn't being used as such). I swear the three of them should have their own TV series as 'The Toilet Inspectors' as every place we go seems to get discussed and graded for its toilets and this one did well.

~Recommendation~

For hearty portions of good quality but slightly bland food, Bougainvilliers is hard to beat if you are staying in the Mouassine area. Keep in mind that almost ALL food in Morocco is pretty bland so an accusation of blandness is not particularly harsh. There's another restaurant just next door that looked to be about 4 times the price and the Cafe Arabe round the corner will set you back around £100 for dinner for four people so it's one of the best value options in the area. The setting is nice and the courtyard is a pleasant place to dine but it's worth bearing in mind that the restaurant doesn't serve alcohol. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 9, 2025

Bougainvillea Cafe
33 Rue Mouassine
Marrakech, Morocco

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Cafe Arabe

Restaurant | "Italian - but not Very!"

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The Cafe Arabe is the sort of place you will find in the guidebooks and so almost by definition it's not the sort of place to which we'd normally go. However it was so close to our riad that we couldn't help but be tempted. The fact that they had alcohol - and my sister and her girlfriend seemed to be at risk of withdrawal symptoms - was the deciding factor in them booking us a table on our second night in the Mouassine district of Marrakech. We knew it wasn't going to be cheap but the reviews we'd seen were very positive and a combination of booze and proximity sealed the deal.The restaurant is nominally Italian but not overtly so. The usual Italian restaurant cliches (I'm thinking waiter...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 9, 2025

Cafe Arabe
184, rue Mouassine
Marrakech, Morocco
024/429728

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Earth Cafe

Restaurant | "A Rare Find in Marrakech"

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On our last day in Marrakech we consulted the guidebooks for something new to do. My husband and I have been twice before and had already worked our way through most of the more obvious tourist attractions but we'd never been to the Bahia Palace in the south of the city. With guidebook in hand I managed to get us and my sister Aileen and her girlfriend Joyce there without getting lost and along the route I spotted signs for a vegetarian and vegan cafe called Earth Cafe. As a fishitarian I'd been getting pretty bored with the food on offer for non-meat eaters which leans very heavily on carrots and potatoes and gets dull very quickly so I was keen to try it on the way back. With the palace ...Read More

On our last day in Marrakech we consulted the guidebooks for something new to do. My husband and I have been twice before and had already worked our way through most of the more obvious tourist attractions but we'd never been to the Bahia Palace in the south of the city. With guidebook in hand I managed to get us and my sister Aileen and her girlfriend Joyce there without getting lost and along the route I spotted signs for a vegetarian and vegan cafe called Earth Cafe. As a fishitarian I'd been getting pretty bored with the food on offer for non-meat eaters which leans very heavily on carrots and potatoes and gets dull very quickly so I was keen to try it on the way back.

With the palace suitably visited and all the other attractions in the area closed for lunch we decided to go and see if we could find the cafe. It was even listed in our guidebook – probably because it's the first and only veggie/vegan restaurant in Marrakech. The cafe is located on a side alley off the Rue Riad Zitoun Kdim which runs south easterly from the south eastern corner of Jemaa el Fna square. Look out for the signs and when you finally see a big arrow suspended above the street, you're in the right place. Head down the alley and there it is.

I was immediately transported back to my sister's student days of hanging out at the Reading Wimmin's centre – this place is just so '1980s wholesome'. If it were not for the total absence of raffia mats and macramé wall hangings it would have been like stepping into a time warp. I think the retro look was probably entirely unintentional but it made me smile none the less.

The ground floor has a tiny courtyard stuffed with scruffy looking chairs and tables with a couple of low ceilinged rooms off the courtyard. Up the stairs everything is painted in bright garish colours with deep orange walls contrasting pleasantly with deep blue doorways and not so pleasantly with a deep purple door to the toilet. The roof is covered with thick clear plastic to protect diners from the elements but I'd hope that can be retracted in the summer as it was already pretty warm in early April.

The menu is available in English and French and is not easy to read since it's written on mirrors on the wall. They keep it pretty simple with four or 5 vegetarian dishes and a similar number of vegan options. I'm sure though that if you wanted the vegetarian dishes 'veganised' they'd be happy to take out the cheese and eggs where appropriate because everything is cooked fresh from scratch. They also make fresh juices but if carrot and beetroot aren't your thing, they aren't so obsessive as to deny you a Coke or Diet Coke if that's what you fancy.

We ordered thee glasses of 'carrot, ginger and orange' juice and my brave sister went for the 'beetroot and something or other' juice. The colours were stunning with the 'carrot plus' coming out a deep mango orange in colour and the beetroot juice looking exactly as you'd imagine it would. Sadly it tastes exactly the way you expect too. I forgot to check up with her later but I was predicting serious pink wee problems after at glass of that. Nothing that looks and tastes like beetroot juice could possibly fail to do you good. Next time you're contemplating over-priced funky juices in a Wagamama, keep in mind you can get a great big glass of lurid orange or purple juice in Marrakech for just 20 Dirhams (about £1.60).

Between us we all managed to choose something different for our meals which is good for review-writing research but not much fun for the kitchen. My husband was trying to be good by ordering a warm salad of seasonal veg with goat cheese which came with a balsamic and olive oil dressing. I ordered a filo parcel stuffed with pumpkin, spinach, poached apple confit and goat cheese. Aileen went for the vegan veggie burger and Joyce ordered spring rolls with blue cheese.

We sipped our lurid drinks and checked out the goods in the cafe's little shop – lots of home pressed oils, odd crafty things and bits and bobs. The waitress brought us some wholemeal bread with oil to dip it in which I guessed was probably argan oil rather than olive oil since Morocco doesn't half bang on about argan oil. For those unfamiliar with argan, it's the uniquely Moroccan tree that goats love to climb because they are addicted to the fruit. If you've ever seen crazy photos of goats up trees, you can bet your money that's an argan tree. The cafe offers cookery classes most days for 200 Dirhams per person which includes lunch and a bottle of oil. That really is more of a mission to spread the word of vegetarianism than a financially viable option since lunch can well cost you half that amount.

Service isn't fast because everything is cooked from scratch in a tiny kitchen. We weren't in a hurry even though it was nearly 3pm by the time we'd ordered. When the food arrived we were all shocked about the size of the portions. My husband's salad was not exceptionally massive but he didn't need to worry because none of the rest of us could get through our enormous dishes so he got everyone's left overs. My filo parcel was about 2 inches thick and 4 or 5 inches square and was sitting on top of a bed of pumpkin and carrots. Joyce's spring rolls were about 6 inches long and a couple of inches thick – not at all what she'd expected. The veggie burger was about the size of a babies head and we all had to help out to get it finished.

My parcel was really just a bit too big to manage and I'd probably have loved it twice as much if it had been half the size. The goat cheese was not terribly 'goaty' but the blend of spices was refreshing after several days of extremely bland Moroccan food. The blue cheese in Joyce's spring roll was less intense than I'd have really wanted but Aileen's veggie burger had lots of ginger in it which gave it a great bite.

Puddings were absolutely impossible to squeeze in after quite so much food. Despite us all claiming our dishes were enormous, somehow we got to the end of the meal with very little in the way of leftovers. It had been a long time since we'd finished our juices so we ordered a couple of diet cokes and Aileen ordered a pot of 'yogi tea' just to find out what it was. It turned out to be a large pot of grass and leaves in a hot water that didn't taste of much but was undoubtedly very good for you.

Our meals came to under 400 Dirhams (approx £32) for the four of us which was excellent value – to be honest we weren't really hungry again for a very long time.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on April 10, 2025

Earth Cafe
No2 Derb Zwak, Riad Zitoun El Kdim
Marrakech, Morocco
212 0 660544992

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Marrakech Journals

Eating Marrakech - one dish at a time

Eating and Drinking in Marrakech

Dar Zellij

Bougainvillea Cafe

Cafe Arabe

Earth Cafe

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