"Food, glorious food! Don't care what it looks like"
- sanderssam
- Sep 17, 2019
- 8 min read
Wow. Such an up and down few days. Morocco-- beautiful, friendly, tasty. But man, some *very* inconvenient travel stuff surrounding it. Let's try and block out the bad, harness the good.
So on my odyssey to Morocco, which involved losing 8 hours of time in Fez and some $$, they (Lufthansa) also lost my bag. Well, one of my bags, the one with all the work clothes in it. So... not the worst thing in the world but as I'm leaving Morocco today without it, it's hard to imagine it winds up in DC for me in time for work on Tuesday.
But hey, that's a later problem! Let's talk Morocco! Block out the bad, harness the good
I got into Fez around 12:30 or so at night. Pretty nice/modern airport, let me say!
Few other things of note:
1) Unlike most places, when people are soliciting you outside the airport to get a taxi, you actually should/have to take one of them up on getting a taxi. Surprisingly, I didn't have to pay the "porter" type guy... usually there's some kind of finder's fee.
2) I thought it would be cool to stay in the "Old Medina [city]". Turns out, way cooler, slash cabs know where it is, if you're in the "New Medina". Which is still pretty old. But by the souk/where all the fun stuff is anyway.
3) There are a thousand "riads", or small little hotels run by small families in Fez (probably Morocco in general, but let's not generalize!). But, your cab driver will not know where it is. Just find your key words and stick to them. Mine was "Boujida", as in "Sidi Boujida", which was as close as you could get to my place.
Ok, so imagine your phone was dying, you get dropped off not really that close to your place, and the streets are teeming with nightlife. It's exciting, right?! Later, when I had a cab driver tell me "not to go out at night" in my neighborhood, it would be slightly tinged with dread, but again, that's later!
Riad Razanne is charming. Down a tiny tributary from the main drag, you would *never* have found this place if you didn't know exactly where it was. The guy who ran the joint was the best. He let me in, made me mint tea, talked to me about what I should do, then left me alone. 🎵It's the best...of...both... worlds... 🎵oh crap, I don't think I'm aloud to like that song anymore. Anyhow, here's a pic of the courtyard area and my room.
Honestly, I was brutally tired after a strenuous travel day, so as soon as I got in and got everything charged, I passed tf out. I did have a walking tour in the morning and a food tour in the afternoon, and I needed my beauty sleep!
So my guide Ahmed meets me at my riad at precisely 8:30, which was barely enough time for me to knock back my morning Moroccan mint tea. But he let me finish!
Ahmed has what you'd call "summer teeth"... you know, "some are there, some are not". But he must be somewhat of a local celebrity. Half the shopkeeps know him, the police know him, the other tour guides and random people in the street know him. As told to me by a random dude in the street "he is a bad guy-- but he is famous like Coca-Cola!".
The first place we went-- after showing me some local chicken coops and show me where all the "unpurchased chickens" each day go (yikes! he called it chicken jail... I call it... abandonment) was to go pick up the other people on our tour. A would-be Indonesian pilot from Qatar and his Spanish girlfriend (I think! couldn't quite pick up on that vibe. But I assume so) joined us. Thank god this tour would be in English though.
First place we went was to see the "King's palace". I gotta be honest, this was not to me very palatial. But I guess he has a few of these? So maybe it's like a summer home?
He's actually coming here next week, so you'd think there'd be more hubbub. Up close, these mosaics are all tiny stones, which they're really proud of. I... don't care that much... but here's proof of it.
They also really care about doors.
Anyhow, after a few pics, we took a quick tour of the "Jewish Quarter" of Fez after that... no, they don't actually call it that officially now, but they used to! Big difference is that the balconies here face the street, where as in most of the Medina/Fez in general, balconies face the courtyard.
Something to know, Morocco did used to be mostly Jews and Berbers at one point. But, not for like 100s of years since then. But there's a history! A food history! A cultural history.
Next stop? a "castle" for a full view of the new medina of Fez. I'll spare you the dinky ruins and just give you the view.
At this point, I began to wonder... "will we eat or drink something on this tour?". The answer? Not yet. Saw some cool ceramic stuff first:
Top Five Takeaways from the above:
1) I'm so proud I used Wix's "Masonry" feature for the above. Wordplay!
2) The 3rd pic of how they make the mosaics, like an upside-down puzzle, was so cool to watch.
3) So many tajines!
4) See? They make jewish ceramics here.
5) I didn't buy anything. Shopkeep hated me.
Also, for the least "Patrick-Swayze" Ghost-like moment of how to quickly make pottery ever, watch the below video. Feel free to hum "Unchained Melody" for like 10 seconds.
I'm not a big pottery guy anyway, so I was excited to finally get to the market portion of this trip. I didn't want to eat a lot there-- I actually had a chef giving me a private tour of the market later, which was (spoiler alert) awesome!-- but I did want to get my bearings and get a look around.
Ok, so pretty much all market tours start at the Blue Gate (Bab Boujloud, which doesn't actually mean that, but hey, it's what they call it), and Ahmed's was no exception.
Some stuff in the market was great to see, spices and such
Other stuff was... a little foreign to me. You know, like how a shop advertises they sell camel meat.
Yes, those are two camel heads in the first picture. I would have been good with just a sign. Or you know what? Probably not eating camel meat. I'm not Chris Tucker in Rush Hour, I'm not dying for some "camel hump". Also, side note, apparently in Morocco, they're not actually camels, but dromedaries (2 humps for the first thing, 1 hump for the second).🤓
Apparently leather's also a big deal here. I wasn't gonna buy anything-- and believe me, my guide knew this and I think informed on me to shopkeepers-- but I did get to see a cool tannery from a rooftop!
After not buying any of the 100s of pairs of men's slippers which were, let's face it, at best gauche, we went to go see a few of the mosques. This part was kind of weird-- the Indonesian guy and my guide went to go pray at one of them, leaving me outside with his girlfriend to get solicited by beggars. I'll give you my "this is what the mosque looked like from the outside" pictures, but I was pretty much dissuaded from going in due to my 1) attire and 2) wearing shoes and 3) not being muslim.
Whatever, I didn't want to go in your mosque anyway (sniff, tear, hold back crying).
We did finally stop at a restaurant for lunch, which I would describe as... ok. Had a beef tajine and traditional Moroccan starters.
Way better than the lunch though, was visiting a bakery afterwards. Apparently, I'm told, it's run by only divorced and widowed Muslim women who band together in a kind of cooperative.
I can't describe the heat and tininess of this bakery.
What I can describe was how delicious it was! Everything had some kind of almonds in it. Some were more like biscotti breadsticks, some were more like a scone. Also, I think my guide just took us here so he could pickup some discounted cakes for his nephew's birthday the next day. But it was cool nevertheless!
After this, Ahmed walked us back to the Blue Gate and left us. Which was fine by me, I had an hour to kill before my food tour of the market here. So sat and enjoyed a fine mint tea for a bit.
Anyhow, after a lovely hour of people watching and sipping tea, I met my guide Amina who would take me on my food tour of the Medina. She's a chef at one of the riads here in the Medina, and promised she would show me all the stuff she buys, what spices are best, and what the locals eat.
In case I don't really capture this well in prose, if you go to Fez ever, book a tour with "Fes Food Tours" and ask for this experience, because having a local chef take me around and show me things is everything I ever wanted in a tour.
First things first, I had seen these spiny fruits everywhere that vendors would cut and sell to people. I had approximately zero desire to eat this, but Amina made me.
Now, it wasn't "undelicious", but it was so sticky, full of seeds, and I was told apart from the shell you had to eat the whole fruit. Kind of tasted like if someone made a sweet honeydew melon, made it a pear, and threw a lot of seeds in there. Ate most of it!
Next, Amina showed me where she would shop for spices in the market, as well as how she would make a few of her dishes.
This may sound weird, but "white beans" are a big deal dish here. They cook them up with parsley, curry powder, salt, pepper, cayenne, and a few other things. She took me to her favorite vendor for making them, roundly criticized and ordered a slightly different preparation, then we ate in front of his shop.
Next, after saying hello to her chef brother at a restaurant nearby (I think he was missing an arm. Not a judgment, just factual), we stopped for kufte at a nearby vendor.
We ate on plastic furniture in the back of his shop-- something about kufte... I used to think it was mixed lamb and beef of some kind, but here apparently, it's always veal and lamb separate. Delicious. And I hate lamb! But, not like this.
After this, I was starting to get full. But Amina insisted that in Fez/Morocco, you have to try "harira" or "spicy vegetable soup you squeeze a lemon into".
I mean... it's like a spicy lentil soup. Pretty good! But the pastries/dates were great.
Also, got to see a little bit of the famous circular Moroccan bread get made.
After this, she walked me all the way through the Medina (to walk off the food), and we went our separate ways. She would have taken me for more food...but good god I could not eat anymore. Plus, I had to be up early the next day for my day trip to Chefchaouen!
Random Things
-Apparently, grieving widows in Morocco wear white for 4 months and 10 days. I mention this because you see this sadly all around the Medina area, and people try to take care of them a little better.
-Moroccan Arabic (Darija) is *REALLY* different from some dialects. Especially from *ANY* of the Arabic I knew. French? Way more helpful here for me. Honestly, English was fine in most places too. But French would get me farther.
Moment of Zen: "Make Clay While the Sun Shines"
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