Best Moroccan Restaurants Around the World

The best-scored Moroccan place in each of 12 cities.

Regional variations

Marrakech and the south

The most internationally visible Moroccan kitchen. Lamb tagines with prunes and almonds, mechoui (whole roast lamb), tanjia marrakchia (the Marrakech slow-cooked meat in a clay urn buried in hammam ashes). Bigger flavors, more sub-Saharan influence.

Fez and the imperial cities

The deepest formal tradition, with court-influenced cooking. B'stilla, the layered phyllo pigeon pie with almonds and cinnamon, is a Fez specialty. Refined tagines with subtle balance and a heavier hand with ras el hanout.

Coastal (Casablanca, Essaouira, Tangier)

Seafood-led tagines, chermoula-marinated grilled fish, sardine cooking, and the lingering French and Spanish colonial influence in patisserie and bistro food.

Atlas Mountains (Berber/Amazigh)

Tagines cooked over open flame on hearth stones, barley couscous, fresh cheese, honey, and the simpler herb-and-vegetable cooking of the highland villages.

North (Tetouan, Chefchaouen)

The most Andalusian-influenced kitchen, with strong Spanish and Sephardic-Jewish layers. Lighter cooking, more vegetables, and the strongest pastry tradition in the country.

Defining Moroccan dishes

Tagine

The slow-cooked stew named for its conical clay pot. Canonical versions include lamb with prunes and almonds, chicken with preserved lemon and olives, kefta (meatball) with egg poached on top, and fish with chermoula.

Couscous

Hand-rolled steamed semolina, served on a communal platter with seven vegetables (turnip, carrot, zucchini, cabbage, pumpkin, chickpea, onion) and lamb or chicken. The traditional Friday family meal.

Harira

Tomato-lentil-chickpea soup with lamb, fresh herbs, and tomato paste, thickened with flour or beaten egg. The Ramadan iftar opener.

B'stilla

Layered phyllo pie traditionally filled with pigeon (now often chicken), almonds, eggs, and cinnamon-sugar, with cinnamon-sugar dusted on top. Sweet, savory, salty, the Fez celebration dish.

Mechoui

Whole lamb or sheep roasted in a pit oven or on a spit, served with cumin and salt. Marrakech street food and celebration food.

Tanjia marrakchia

Marrakech-only specialty: beef or lamb with preserved lemon, cumin, and saffron in a clay urn buried in the hot ashes of the hammam for hours. Bachelor cooking, traditionally.

Chermoula

The herb marinade and sauce: cilantro, parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, lemon, olive oil. Used for fish and seafood preparations.

Msemen

Square laminated flatbread, pan-fried until crisp and flaky, eaten at breakfast with honey, jam, or amlou (almond-argan-honey spread).

Beghrir

Thousand-hole semolina pancakes, like a thicker Russian blini, served with butter and honey at breakfast.

Briouats

Fried phyllo or warqa pastries filled with meat, fish, or sweet almond paste. Triangular or cigar-shaped.

Zaalouk

Smoky eggplant and tomato salad with garlic, cumin, paprika, and olive oil. Served warm or at room temperature as part of the cold-salad spread.

Mint tea

Green tea brewed with fresh spearmint and a heavy hand of sugar, poured from height into small glasses to create a foam. Drunk throughout the day.

How to order

A traditional Moroccan meal opens with a spread of cold salads (zaalouk, taktouka, carrot and orange, beet) eaten with bread, followed by a tagine or couscous as the main, then mint tea and pastries. At restaurants the salad spread (kemia) may come unbid; at home it is the standard opener. Tagines are made for sharing; a single tagine with bread feeds two to three people. Couscous is traditionally Friday lunch and may not be available other days at home-style places.

The rookie mistakes: cutting the tagine ingredients before serving (it is presented intact, with the bread used to scoop), refusing the mint tea because of the sugar (the sugar is essential to the tea), expecting a knife and fork at casual places (bread is the utensil), ordering a French wine list at a Moroccan restaurant when the local Meknès or Atlas Mountain wines are increasingly worth trying, and rushing the meal (a Moroccan lunch can run three hours, and the conversation between courses is part of the dish). At a serious riad dinner, the host's family may join the table for tea; this is hospitality, not informality, and the right response is to accept and stay.

What to drink with it

Mint tea is the universal pairing, before, during, and after the meal. Moroccan wine has improved markedly: producers like Domaine Ouled Thaleb and Volubilia from Meknès make serious reds (Syrah, Cabernet, and Carignan blends) that pair well with lamb tagines. Almond milk and orange blossom drinks are the non-alcoholic options at celebrations. With harira during Ramadan, dates and honey-sweetened pastries (chebakia) are the traditional accompaniments. The strongest pairing for any tagine, though, is fresh khobz bread for scooping.

Where to eat it

Marrakech and Fez are the great food cities, with the deepest traditional cooking in family-run riads, the Jemaa el-Fnaa night market (Marrakech), and the medina food stalls. Casablanca for modern and French-influenced; Essaouira for seafood; Tangier for the Spanish-Moroccan hybrid. Outside Morocco, Paris has the largest Moroccan diaspora kitchen, with serious cooking from Belleville to the Marais. London, Brussels, and Madrid all hold strong Moroccan scenes anchored by diaspora communities.

A short history

Moroccan cuisine descends from Berber agricultural cooking, layered with Arab conquest (7th century), Andalusian and Sephardic Jewish migration after the 1492 Reconquista, Saharan trade-route spices, and French and Spanish colonial overlays in the 19th and 20th centuries. The royal kitchens of Fez and Marrakech codified the modern dish vocabulary, and the Moroccan diaspora in France carried the cuisine into European mainstream awareness from the 1960s onward.

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