Tangia is Marrakech's bachelor dish: lamb or beef sealed in a tall clay urn with preserved lemon, saffron, garlic, cumin and olive oil, then buried in the hammam's wood-fired furnace coals for seven hours.
Where to eat it: 3 restaurants across 1 city.
Tangia emerged in the Marrakech medina as the working man's lunch. Craftsmen and merchants would assemble the urn at home, drop it at the neighbourhood hammam furnace on the way to work, paying the fire-tender (mul farnatchi) about a dirham to bury it in the coals. After a morning's labour they would collect the finished urn for lunch. The dish is uniquely Marrakchi; you find it almost nowhere else in Morocco.
Tip from the editors. The slow temperature is the whole game. Anything above 150C dries the lamb; below 120C the bones don't yield. Use a probe thermometer.
Chez Lamine Hadj Mustapha at Marrakech's Mechoui Alley off Jemaa el-Fna has roasted 40 lambs daily in a pit oven since 1965; tangia is the other signature.
Try: Mechoui (slow-pit lamb) and tangia
Tip: Mechoui sold by weight; 500g feeds two with khobz. Arrive before 14:00 or the good cuts are gone. Cash only.
Le Trou au Mur is a moroccan room in Medina. Closed Mondays. Tangia must be ordered 24 hours ahead; the kitchen seals the urns the morning before service.
Why locals love it: A Marrakech kitchen committed to forgotten Moroccan family dishes (tangia, m'hammer) that most riad-restaurants consider too complex to serve.
Tip: Closed Mondays. Tangia must be ordered 24 hours ahead; the kitchen seals the urns the morning before service.
Kamal Laftimi's Le Jardin in Marrakech's medina runs walk-in brunch in a 16th-century riad courtyard; club sandwich, eggs, tanjia from the wood-fired ovens.
Order: Club sandwich frites in the green courtyard.
Tip: Reservations don't take. Arrive before 12:30 for lunch or wait. Chameleons live in the lemon trees overhead.
More cities are in research. Want tangia covered somewhere specific? Tell us where you want to eat.