In the 19th century, travellers from Europe to Morocco sent back dispatches describing feasts of up to 70 dishes served in the jasmine-scented palaces of its imperial cities.
Today, even the briefest walk past the market stalls of the Marrakech medina prepares the visitor’s senses for the idea of sheer abundance: pomegranates the size of children’s heads are piled high alongside bunches of luxurious mint for tea and an array of vegetables that range from ordinary turnips to cardoons with their extravagant foliage; dried fruits, nuts and pastries are temptingly arranged in successive shopfronts; over everything hangs the perfume of turmeric, cumin and dried roses from the spice merchant’s booth.
Less tempting are the hundreds of chickens awaiting imminent execution in stinking cages stored above butchers’ chopping blocks; or the boxes of sardines from the port of Essaouira giving off a high, sometimes putrid smell as the traders gut and scale their fish into the gutter.
But all, in some form, are bound for the overflowing tables of the riads and restaurants of the city, and it is as well to arrive here prepared for a gastronomic endurance test – especially when it comes to the traditional Moroccan feast, or diffa, once provided at home on special occasions and now available to paying guests.
On our week-long gourmet tour, we found that most of the more expensive, tourist-friendly restaurants of Marrakech offered a set menu derived from the classic diffa. But their food was of variable quality, inferior by far to the à la carte menu at La Maison Arabe or the sublime Al Fassia in the modern Gueliz district, an all-female enterprise offering delicate textures and flavours in calm surroundings that has become something of a lunchtime haven for visitors and locals seeking to escape the medieval hustle and bustle of the medina. So for the best feast experience we were advised to seek out either Le Tobsil, a gastronomic hotspot, or Dar Marjana, where the food, entertainment and setting turn an evening out into a theatrical event. We opted for drama.
Entering under the protection of a djellaba-clad guide sporting a fez and swinging a lantern, we passed into the tiled courtyard of Dar Marjana to enjoy the sound of Berber lutes and a drink beneath a giant palm while the red and black-liveried waiting staff prepared our table – not just with the scattered rose petals about which, after a week in the city, we had become blasé but by spelling out our names in red sequins. Our hands were washed at the low table with orange-water from a brass tureen and then the serious six-course business began.
To start, the cooked salads, 13 in all that included in this case a tomato relish, one aubergine and two pepper-based dishes, meat-stuffed briouat pastries and the traditional lamb brains and liver. These are prepared following many of the same principles as Mediterranean starters but with the addition of honey, vinegar, preserved lemon peel and spices such as cumin, paprika and cinnamon. Though fairly standard fare in Morocco, they are, here at least, deliciously sweet and tangy, and mercifully lacking in the over-pungent sardine pastry-fillings.
Then a surprise: instead of the traditional sweet-and-savoury pigeon or chicken pastilla with its layers of sugar, egg, cinnamon, meat and filo pastry, our next course was a spectacular pigeon pie.
The pie’s crust was parted to allow clouds of perfumed steam to escape. The tender meat and sauce, once served, did not disappoint: Dar Marjana serves what it calls “cuisine bourgeoise Fassie (from Fes)” but this is a dish fit for a royal table. Next, the tagines, one sweet, one savoury: lamb with dried apricots, prunes and almonds and another lamb dish with pinky-black olives and cardoons.
This, you will agree, is enough food. But the week’s experience had prepared us to expect the inevitable follow-up: a platter of couscous cooked with chicken and seven vegetables. My one mouthful was delicious, light yet pungent.
Diane Seed, my aunt, who led our tour, is fond of quoting metaphysical poet George Herbert at moments like this: “I struck the board and cried, ‘No more.’ ” But the giggling waiters were without mercy, bringing forth in quick succession a traditional layered pastilla dessert of filo pastry, chopped almonds and milk custard, a dish of cinnamon-dusted orange slices and a plate of almond-stuffed petits fours to be taken with the mint tea, which one of their number was expertly blending from a tea chest in the courtyard.
If only our palates could have been refreshed as well as our hands with rosewater from the silver shaker proffered as a troupe of Gnaoua musicians speeded up their songs and began to beat out their tune in bare feet on the polished plaster floor.
By the time the rest of the assembled company were gearing up to join in with the dancer, we had to call it a night and roll off our cushions home to the riad, where we dreamed of the next morning’s honey pancakes and oranges. In Marrakech, the feasting never ends.
Feasting in Morocco 
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