It’s going home day today and our much-needed week’s sunshine break in Marrakesh is nearly over. Over the last three evenings we’ve tried two new restaurants and spent the last night at one of our favourite haunts.
On Friday night we went to Entrepote, a Mediterranean restaurant recommended by another hotel guest. Here we enjoyed a lighter bite of Spanish tapas washed down with an excellent authentic red wine sangria.
Saturday, on the way back from our hammam we went to Le Tanjia and enjoyed a high-quality Moroccan meal. It began with a traditional starter which has at its heart a selection of pancake roll-style pastries filled with cheese, chicken and vegetable. Alongside there are various small dishes with a wide range of salad items such as beetroot, carrot, tomato and olives all heavily pickled, spiced and dressed.
Then we had a selection of tajines – beef meatballs with egg, lamb and prunes in a tasty sweet sauce and on-the-bone chicken. All three meats broke apart beautifully and melted in our mouths. They were served with a creamy tasting vegetable couscous with some light sweet Moroccan flat-bread. For dessert we had bubbly Moroccan mint tea and almond encrusted crepes.
This is a great place to dip into Moroccan cuisine as often I find one tajine isn’t enough. Here you get to try a variety along with salad and couscous. This is also good entry point to the medina – a relatively clean and calm quarter – before heading for the historic UNESCO-rated Jemaa-el-fna market square for which Marrakesh is famous.
Grand Cafe de la Poste
We saved the best restaurant for last and went to Grande Café de la Poste, a French-style bistro which overlooks Place du 16 November, one of the city’s most prominent intersections.
After being closed for 12 years, it was renovated in 2005 but managed to retain all the allure it must have had at the beginning of the twentieth century. Inside you find wooden chairs studded in copper, a marble countertop, natural leather banquettes, huge black and white checker board floor tiles and moulded mirrors worthy of the largest brasseries.
In the evening, the ultra-chic atmosphere becomes more intimate with soft lighting, white table cloths, and distinctly Moroccan soft-furnishings all in a French colonial style setting.
That’s how we spent our final evening eating an excellent three course French meal washed down with a fresh, light Provence-style vin gris – an increasingly popular variant of rose wine made from red grapes.
The food was good, the jazz excellent and the ambiance unbeatable, it won’t be long before we’re back in Marrakesh.
