Marrakech in winter

There are many, varied reasons why so many people leave the cold north of the northern hemisphere for Marrakech in Morocco in the winter and spring.

The picture above was taken at seven o’clock one evening from the rooftop bar of El Fenn Hotel in the middle of Marrakech Medina, the one immediately below at lunchtime up in the Atlas mountains, less than a 90-minute drive away. It is warm – especially in the late afternoons – although mornings are chilly, and the fresh oranges are plentiful, both on Morocco’s appealing dishes, on trees everywhere and by the van-full in the Medina.

Other reasons for a visit to Marrakech include the opportunity to experience an extraordinary culture: the chance to go buy keenly priced clothes and handicrafts in the Medina, where there are rumoured to be 700–900 official riads; to play golf; to enjoy the sunshine; as well as the numerous opportunities to eat and drink well. (The shop with the widest range of wines, both Moroccan and well-chosen imports, is Barbe at 61 rue Yougoslavie in Gueliz, Marrakech’s new town).

But first of all, three bits of insider information. Firstly, Marrakech is a city of the ‘hidden step’, as one local kindly pointed out to me. These hazards are everywhere, so do pay attention to where you are walking.

The second is that however good a restaurant may be, it cannot compete with nature.

Thirdly Moroccan food has always been sweet thanks to the inclusion of so much fruit and nuts – for example in the savoury tagines, but it seems to be getting even sweeter. We travelled with three American couples who for various reasons eschewed the dessert course whenever it was offered, but it seemed to make no difference to our overall sugar intake. Both first and main courses were often really quite sweet.

El Fenn Hotel, whose origins lie in a private house bought 20 years ago by Howell James and Vanessa Branson but today employs over 150 staff and comprises over 40 bedrooms (and was once completely taken over by Madonna), provided our first insight into this lively city. The entrance leads directly into a shop full of robustly priced Moroccan designer goods and then, via a spiral staircase lined with vermilion tiles (built when COVID closed the hotel), to a rooftop bar whose spectacular views – with cocktails that are almost as spectacular – makes it the place to be. Below, the rooftop by day and night.

We ate here twice but in the wrong order. If we had eaten lunch there first, we would have been able to see the whole set-up and also to enjoy an excellent introduction to Moroccan cooking via an extremely sensible lunch menu. It offers a generous, ever-changing array of half a dozen salads for 350 dirhams (£28) plus a further 100 dirhams (£8) for the addition of grilled lamb, chicken or prawns. The goat’s cheese cigars and the carrot-and-cabbage coleslaw (a surprisingly common dish in Morocco) were memorable.

The evening before, dishes of octopus carpaccio below and a special of the day of a lamb tagine with apricots were equally impressive. At any time, this is a very good place to start, with its great view over the Medina.

Our second dinner in town was at the extremely well-intentioned Sahbi Sahbi restaurant where the entire team are women. Women, here as everywhere, are the original cooks, charged with the transmission of recipes from generation to generation.

The highly regarded Studio KO was chosen to design the restaurant and unfortunately they designed an interior with apparently little thought for the customer. The interior is determinedly modern and the surfaces extremely hard so that the only feature able to absorb all the noise is the napkin. Thick wooden tables, nothing soft at all on the walls, heavy tiles on the floor, a hard metal surface on the wood-burning oven and a large, open kitchen constructed of wood and metal down the middle of the restaurant meant that the dark room reverberated with noise. Conversation was extremely difficult and it was so dark that we all had to use our phones to examine the menu.

The food was not the best: a pigeon pastilla that was covered in too much sugar and a disappointing dish of brania, a veal and aubergine tagine, completed an evening that I was not sorry to see the end of.

By contrast, our lunch the following day after a guided tour of the Medina during which the images below of a butcher and egg merchants are but a small selection, could not have been better or more suitable.

Our lunch in the Medina was at Café Bacha in one small corner of the vast Dar El Bacha, a restored former palace. It was built in 1910, the year the coffee company, Bacha Coffee, was founded. The palace was neglected for more than 60 years but was then restored to its former glory and today houses the Musée des Confluences – so named to celebrate interfaith cooperation – and currently a fascinating exhibition by Moroccan photographer Lalla Assia Essaydi.

Past a branch of Bacha Coffee Shop, the rooms of Café Bacha share the grandeur of the restored palace. In fact, there is a heavy hint of the film Casablanca in the air. The waiters are all formally dressed in white jacket, white shirt, a thin black tie and a red fez at a jaunty angle. If Sydney Greenstreet were to walk in, fly-swatter in hand, I would not have been that surprised.

The cafe’s main purpose is to sell coffee from a thick list of various coffees from around the world (there are several other branches in Singapore). These are delivered in highly polished coffee pots and served in immaculate Café Bacha-branded china. Best to let your waiter choose for you. In my case he chose an impressively attractive coffee from Thailand.

The menu is inventive, more tearoom than full-blown restaurant, and it’s all very well done. Scrambled eggs with black truffles was well received by our party, as was another dish of smoked sardines with tomatoes and gremolata. But best of all was a dish that reminded me of my late mother (so 1960s Manchester) described as ‘kefta from the surrounding countryside’. What arrived was a delightful dish of mincemeat inside peeled tomatoes with meatballs to the side plus a dish of irresistible matchstick potatoes. Very sadly for this lover of desserts, their extensive list of desserts and pastries, including oeufs à la neige, was not even requested let alone perused by our party.

But finally I did manage to influence at least what was drunk. This was at a lunch in the extraordinary gardens of the relatively new, beautifully designed Olinto, which describes itself, quite accurately, as ‘a luxury Atlas mountain retreat in the Berber heartland’ (local view above) and comprises just nine private pavilions. Honeymoon couples are presumably the target audience.

Here we ate under a curved metal structure made locally that had survived the terrible earthquake 18 months ago and is covered in wisteria from late spring. While the others ordered rosé, I looked at their drinks menu and ordered a date negroni which really hit the spot and was passed around the table to be sampled by the intrigued others.

The food was as good as the cocktail. The lamb tagine shown below was here paired with pears but it was the dish in which it was served that impressed me almost as much. Invariably, the tagines with their tall lids in which this style of food is served are too large, as if the kitchen has bought only a size for two and are then reused for one. At Olinto the dish – and its contents – were perfect for one.

A winter break in Morocco is highly restorative.

El Fenn Hotel Restaurant and Rooftop Bar Derb Moullay Abdullah Ben Hussain, Bab El Ksour, Medina Marrakech, Morocco; tel +212 5244 41210

Sabhi Sabhi 37 Boulevard el Mansour Eddahbi, Marrakech, Morocco 40000; tel +212 662 682312

Café Bacha Dar el Bacha, Route Sidi Abdelaziz, Marrakech, Morocco 40000; tel +212 524 381293

Olinto Olinto Atlas Mountain Retreat, Ouirgane, Morocco 42152; tel +212 661 827093 

Which wines to drink while in Morocco? We have some ideas in our tasting notes database. Come back next Sunday to see where Nick’s been, or, to stay abreast of his reviews, sign up for our weekly newsletter.

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Morocco food

Nick Lander