How to spend a foodie weekend in Marrakech

For my 30th birthday I’m in Marrakech. After wanting to visit for the whole of my twenties, I’ve made it with days to spare. What’s drawn me isn’t just the beauty of the city, or the infamously good shopping, but the experimental and thriving food scene. Long gone are the days when friends would return saying that all they had eaten was their body weight in tagine – I found the culinary delicacies wildly varied and all equally delicious.

We start off strong. Immediately after we land, in the taxi to the hotel, we’re given fresh dates and almonds. Nothing really prepares you for proper Moroccan dates – they are better than toffee, and as we devour all of them while we watch the chaos of the streets outside the windows as we edge by; everyone on motorbikes moving in unpredictable rhythms, the faded red walls of the medina stretching along by our side.

We are spending the first two nights at Amanjena. In the travel world, Aman hotels have such a degree of clout and mystique that I don’t know quite what to expect. The outskirts of Marrakech fold away and before we know it we’re pulling through big metal gates and suddenly the dirt roads become green lawns fringed with hot pink bougainvillea. We’re greeted with fresh mint tea poured with signature flourish from a great height, and small but delectable pistachio cakes.

Amanjena, Morocco

Amanjena

Amanjena has a majesty. Set around a massive central square basin filled with huge carp, there are ‘villas’ – there’s nothing here so humble as a room. We are staying in one of their smaller options – a pavilion – which shows how grand the whole space is because the circular room is bigger than my entire flat, with a large outdoor courtyard complete with a fountain dotted with rose petals that are refreshed every day. It also has a towering outside open seating area where you could lounge all day and never need to travel beyond your front door. Giddy with excitement, we prise ourselves away to explore the rest of the hotel and take a taxi into the medina.

For lunch, I want us to try somewhere that’s been on my list for months: the rooftop bar Flowers. We almost can’t find the entrance among the labyrinth of streets, but after wandering the entire circumference of the restaurant trying to find the right door, we make it inside. On a roof high above the chaotic streets of the Medina, an oasis of tiled tables and umbrellas and quiet music greets us. As we know we have a big dinner ahead, we have a light lunch: tomato salad, cabbage and cheddar rolls (which are incredible; I didn’t know cabbage could taste like that), and labneh studded with strawberries and fresh herbs. All mopped up with Zatar-crusted flatbreads smothered in oil and butter.

After lunch, we delicately explore the shops of the Medina, starting by popping into the maze-like Mustapha Blaoui, a cavernous homeware shop that stretches back into four floors of incredible finds: rainbow tapestry chairs, intricately painted pottery, and lanterns in every shape and size and colour hanging from the ceiling. Enamoured with just about everything, I try Googling how easy it would be to ship a chair back to London (to my parents’ dismay). After deciding that the crowds and depths of the souk require more energy than we currently have, we head back to the hotel in time for golden hour and dinner.

Amanjena, Morocco

Amanjena

Rather unusually for our first evening meal, we are eating in Aman’s Italian restaurant, Arva. For those who might have eaten too many tagines on their trip (if there’s such a thing, I’m not convinced), Arva is a fantastic option (you don’t need to be staying at the hotel). We eat at huge sofa seats with the sounds of a live musician playing Spanish guitar in the background. I go for the homemade cacio-e-pepe gnocchi with rich pecorino and generous handfuls of black pepper, while my dad tries the pappardelle with lamb ragu, parmesan and a sprinkle of chilli powder for heat. The local seabass comes with a puttanesca-esque sauce of black olives, capers and tomatoes. Instead of dessert, we opt for mojitos with heaps of fresh Moroccan mint.

After a truly blissful night’s sleep, waking up to roll back the doors straight onto the courtyard for our first full day of sunshine, we drink coffee in our private courtyard before strolling over to breakfast. The star of the show is a golden milk – almond milk mixed with turmeric and honey that was truly delicious. I also try Msemen pancakes, incredible traditional Moroccan square-shaped pancakes that I eat with lashings of homemade almond butter and local honey.

For a lunch on the go, or a snack while you shop the Medina, try Sabich. You’ll almost walk past it, just one man making stuffed pittas by the side of the street. He stuffs them with fresh falafel, pickles, cabbage, egg, tahini and fresh herbs. Hungry from hours of shopping I devour mine and wish I’d got a second. If you’re in need of a caffeine hit too, try Bacha Coffee across the street in the Dar el Bacha Palace. Many famous people have also had a pick-me-up there, from Winston Churchill to Charlie Chaplin.

For something completely different to the chaos of the Medina or the grandeur of Amanjena, for dinner we head to Gueliz, the modern part of the city. It feels worlds away from what we have seen so far, huge neon signs and residential apartments. We have opted for Farmers. On entering you could be in New York or Copenhagen – dimly lit, huge curtains and an open kitchen. This is a farm-to-table concept, every dish more delicious than the last. Two standouts are the roasted squash, with labneh, squash tempura, walnuts and pecorino – so much more than the sum of its parts – and the steamed leeks, with vinaigrette, pangrattato, Atlas wild capers, and pomegranate. We mop it all up with their house bread, soft as a pillow.

L’Hotel, designed by Jasper Conran

L’Hotel

Our next hotel is a complete contrast to the expanse and pared-back pink minimalism of Amanjena. Right in the centre of the Medina is L’Hotel, designed by Jasper Conran. I’m not sure I can overstate how beautiful L’Hotel is, or how outstanding its staff, all of whom feel like friends by the time we leave two days later. I don’t know what to expect ahead of arriving. The pictures on their website don’t remotely do justice to the peace and calm of the riad. From the moment you enter, through what feels like a secret door, every single detail is considered and exquisite. There are even three tortoises just clambering about the ground floor, often gravitating towards the warmth of the fires, by whom I am immediately besotted.

We stay in the Agadir suite – the newest and largest of the five rooms, which has both its own private internal courtyard, with a fountain trickling quietly in the background when you relax, and also a second rooftop terrace with its own cold plunge pool. Both my mum and I brave it, before coffee, on the morning of our shared birthday. A bracing start to a new decade.

We have dinner that evening at L’Hotel, which I cannot recommend highly enough – every dish is exquisite. We choose to eat on the partially-covered rooftop, and on a warm spring evening, we can sit outside in light jackets. When it gets cooler, the staff light a fire near our table so we can stay outside as long as we want. We feast on three types of salads to start, which could have themselves been the whole meal. Lentils, pomegranate seeds, fresh goats’ cheese, peppers, bitter wild leaves and crushed dates – it’s all delicious. For mains, we have traditional tagines cooked and served in the brown brick pots. There are both chicken and beef tagines, and vegetable tagines on a bed of peas - a rainbow array of every vegetable under the sun. We mop up the sauce with traditional thick breads, unsure how we’ve even been able to eat all of this.

L’Hotel

L’Hotel

Our final lunch is at the much-lauded El Fenn in the centre of town. Making our entrance through their concept store, where I felt like a magpie, my eyes drawn to all the shiny objects, we climb up their spiral staircase to the rooftop, met with a deep purple hibiscus juice as a welcome drink. The rooftop is expansive, adorned in deep red or multi-coloured Moroccan rug cushions, groups of all ages eating lunch and drinking cocktails under the sun. We lunch under a wall covered in hundreds of differently patterned red plates, all beautiful.

We take their signature lunch menu, a selection of five fresh seasonal Moroccan salads that change daily. We had everything from sticky charred sweet potato salad to broccoli with mint and dates and nuts.

There’s nothing quite like a massage after a heavy lunch – potentially ill-advisedly heavy. I head downstairs to their spa the second I finish my slice of cake, marvelling at the sheer scale and beauty of the hotel. I go for their ‘Anti-Fatigue’ massage, an intensive full body massage to relieve deep muscle stress. It is the longest massage I’ve ever had – a full 80 minutes of pure heaven – and I emerged feeling years younger. Helpful for a birthday.…