Eating at the food stalls at Marrakech's Djemma el Fna
There's a huge variety of food stalls in the square at nighttime which fit into various categories including
- tourist-oriented
- soup, cake and dates
- egg sandwiches
- snails in broth
- fish and seafood
- brain, sheep heads and tanjia
- heated spiced drink and cake
You'll undoubtedly be accosted by 'barkers' who try to entice you onto a particular stall but don't let them make the decision of where you eat for you!
My advice would always be to avoid the stalls that cater for the western tastes—the food isn't particularly good and anyone expecting high quality bastilla (pigeon/chicken pie in a filo-like pastry) will be disappointed—the pies I've tasted were more like cardboard. They place numerous little saucers containing olives, bread, harrisa, etc. on the table then they try to charge 5dh for each bowl that's used which is really steep when you consider the small loaves of bread cost around half a dirham. And then the food servers have the cheek to ask for a tip afterwards. Ha!
As always, the best food is where the locals eat, even if it means queueing up for a seat. I like to move from stall to stall—have a starter, then move on and wander for a while before choosing somewhere else for a main, then more wandering and finish up with a 'puddy'.
For starters my favourte soup stall is #75 as their harira is excellent (3dh per bowl) and they have quarters of lemon to squeeze onto the soup. As an alternative there are several snail stalls—the snails are fine and served in a bovril-like broth. I do wonder, however, what I was doing wrong when eating my snails as some local young ladies were highly amused.
For main course, stall #14 with its fish and sea food is always popular with locals queueing up to wait for a seat to become available.
The stall to its right does a really good 'tanjia' (15-20dh) which is a delicious rich fairly fatty meat dish peculiar to Marrakech. I tried the sheep's head (the cheek meat is supposted to be very tender) but it was all cut up and mixed together which wasn't appealing. Brain is something I've avoided so far. And tripe is as appetising as the name suggests.
For pudding there are some stalls selling spiced drinks (cloves, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon) and spiced cakes and #70 is my favourite of these.



