Food Tours · Tour

Four Olives, a Herbalist's Berber Tea, and Tanjia

Five stops, and the counting is precise, which is a good sign: four varieties of olive, three pastries, three courses at dinner. Somebody has thought about the shape of it. It starts at Souk Semmarine, in the middle of the Medina, for the olives, the pastries and an assortment of roasted and spiced nuts, with the stalls and the produce explained around them. Then Jemaa el-Fnaa after dark, which is a different square from the daytime one, for snail soup with its spiced broth, harira, chebakia and dates. Rue du Mouassine next, for the everyday things: the flatbread that gets called Moroccan pizza, filled with spiced vegetables or meat; a Moroccan pancake, beghrir or harcha depending on the day, with honey or butter; and msemen, the layered flatbread that is crisp outside and soft inside. The herbalist is the stop that is not about eating. Moroccan herbalism is a working tradition rather than a museum piece, and you learn what the local plants and spices do, in cooking and in medicine, over a Royal Berber tea, which is a mountain-herb blend. Dinner closes it. Warm lentils in cumin and olive oil, seasonal Moroccan salads, then tanjia, the Marrakech dish, slow-cooked in a clay pot with beef or lamb, preserved lemon, garlic and spices. Dessert is orange slices with cinnamon, or pastries. Up to fifteen people, in English, with water, tea or coffee and everything you eat. Wheelchair accessible throughout, with accessible transport, and prams are fine. Alcohol and soft drinks are extra.