If you are curious about food in Morocco, you probably know the names already. Tagine, couscous, pastilla, mint tea. What is harder to find out is what a Morocco food tour actually involves. Do you cook? Do you spend the whole time in restaurants? Is there anything besides eating?
Here is what a food-focused trip looks like when I plan one, stop by stop. This follows our 12-day Flavors of Morocco route, but nothing in it is fixed. Every trip we run is private, so it gets reshaped around what you like to eat and how fast you like to move.
Casablanca: start with the street, not the mosque
Casablanca is the city most visitors fly into and leave quickly, which is a pity if you care about food. A street food walk here takes about three hours. We start late morning and go through stalls and small kitchens that most visitors walk straight past.
After that, I like to add some context. A walk through the Habous quarter, the old medina and the Mellah, then the Hassan II Mosque. It helps to see the places the meal you just ate came from.
Marrakech: eat in the square, then cook
On the first evening in Marrakech we head into Jemaa el-Fnaa for a food tour that runs about three and a half hours from 5:30 pm. Grilled meats, snail soup, orange juice squeezed from a cart. The square is loud, crowded and smoky, and it is much easier to enjoy when someone who knows it is deciding where you stop.
The next day is the cooking day. It starts in the souk, where you pick out the vegetables, spices and herbs yourself. The class begins around 10 am and lasts about three hours, and then you sit down and eat what you made. A tagine tastes different when you chose the tomatoes.
Nobody is graded. If you have never cooked anything Moroccan, that is fine. If you cook every day at home, you will leave with a few habits you did not have before.
A day in the mountains, with lunch in a village home
The next day is open. You can stay in the medina or visit the Majorelle Garden, or you can leave the city. Imlil is about an hour and a quarter from Marrakech, in the High Atlas foothills. A local guide leads a short hike, one to two hours, and then you have lunch with an Amazigh family in their home.
The cooking is simple and hearty. It is a different kind of hospitality from the city.
The long road south
This is the day with the most driving. We leave after an early breakfast and cross the High Atlas by the Tizi n’Tichka pass, then take the quiet road through the Ounila valley to Ait Ben Haddou, the earthen kasbah village listed by UNESCO. The drive is about four and a half hours before stops, and we do stop.
The next day is longer still, six to seven hours, and ends at the edge of the Sahara at Erg Chebbi. In the desert you have tea with nomads, visit a medfouna workshop (medfouna is the stuffed bread from the south) and spend the night in a desert camp.
Essaouira: the menu changes at the coast
Back through Marrakech, then west to the Atlantic. Essaouira eats differently from everywhere else on the route. Fish comes first, and the port is part of the town’s daily life. We include a cooking class, a walk through the souk, and a stop at an argan oil cooperative outside town.
Spices, argan oil and preserved lemons all travel well, so this is a good place to shop for the kitchen you have at home.
Questions people ask about a Morocco food tour
Do I need to be a good cook? No. The classes are hands-on, but you are there to learn, and nobody will judge your tagine.
What about dietary needs? Tell me before we plan. Moroccan cooking has many vegetable-based dishes, and I can shape the days around what you can and cannot eat.
Are all meals included? On the Flavors of Morocco route, breakfast and the cooking sessions are included. Other meals are not specified, so you choose where to eat and pay as you go. Some people prefer it that way.
Is 12 days too long? It can be shorter. The Flavors of Morocco route is a starting point, not a fixed package. Tell me how many days you have and what you want to eat, and I will adjust the route.
Planning a trip around food?
Have a look at the Flavors of Morocco tour for the full route, then send me a message with your dates and what you would like to eat. I will draft a route, it costs nothing, and we change it until it feels like your trip.
