The good news: Moroccan food rewards the patient eater. The bad news: tourist restaurants serve a flattened version. Here's the real menu, with notes on where to find each at its best. **1. Tagine** — Not a dish, a cooking vessel: a conical clay pot that traps steam. The classics: tagine of lamb with prunes and almonds (festive, often Friday), chicken with preserved lemons and olives (the most widespread), beef with quince. Eaten with bread, no cutlery. Where: any Berber roadside stop in the Atlas, or a riad kitchen if you're staying somewhere small. Avoid the 70-dirham Jemaa el-Fnaa tourist tagines — go to a side-street local place for 35. **2. Couscous** — Friday is couscous day. The classic is "tfaya" — couscous with caramelised onions, raisins and cinnamon, served with beef or chicken. The texture is everything: hand-rolled semolina, steamed three times. If you only eat couscous once in Morocco, eat it on a Friday lunch in a local home. **3. Pastilla (b'stilla)** — A sweet-savoury miracle. Layers of paper-thin warqa pastry filled with shredded pigeon (or chicken, more common now), almonds, eggs and cinnamon, dusted with icing sugar on top. The first bite is confusing; the third is addictive. Fez is the homeland. **4. Harira** — The traditional Ramadan break-fast soup, but eaten year-round. Lentils, chickpeas, tomato, meat, a generous handful of fresh coriander and parsley, finished with a squeeze of lemon. The best harira costs 7 dirhams and is sold from huge cauldrons on the street at sunset. **5. Mechoui** — Whole roasted lamb, slow-cooked in underground clay ovens until it falls apart at a touch. Eaten with salt, cumin and bread. Atlas weddings and Sunday lunch. **6. Tangia** — Don't confuse with tagine. Tangia is a Marrakech-specific clay urn, sealed and slow-cooked for 6–8 hours in the embers of a hammam furnace. Beef or lamb with preserved lemon, garlic, saffron, cumin. The dish that married cooking arrived back in Marrakech. **7. Kefta tajine** — Spiced minced beef in tomato sauce with eggs cracked on top in the last minute. Comfort food, cheap, available everywhere. **8. Briouates** — Triangular pastries filled with meat, chicken or seafood, deep-fried. Sweet version with almonds and orange-blossom syrup is dessert. **9. Zaalouk** — A smoky cooked eggplant and tomato salad, eaten cold with bread. The Moroccan answer to baba ghanoush. **10. Msemen / Beghrir** — Two breakfast pancakes. Msemen is layered, almost croissant-like; beghrir is "1000 holes" — a yeasted crepe that drinks honey. With mint tea. **11. Mint tea (atay)** — Not a drink, a ritual. Green tea, fresh mint, sugar (a lot — start with less and they'll add more). Poured from a height so a head of foam forms in the glass. Refused only at risk of offence. Three glasses are traditional: "the first bitter as life, the second strong as love, the third sweet as death." **12. Orange juice from Jemaa el-Fnaa** — 5 dirhams. Squeezed in front of you. The single best deal in Morocco. **Cooking class**: 60–120 EUR. Souk shopping with the cook, then 3–4 dishes in a riad kitchen, then you eat what you made. Best in Marrakech and Fez. Highly recommended — you learn what the spice combinations actually are. **A word on alcohol**: not part of traditional Moroccan dining, but available in hotels, larger restaurants and dedicated bars. Casablanca, Flag Special and Stork are the local beers; Volubilis, Médaillon and CB Signature are decent Moroccan wines. Eat slowly. Three hours per meal is normal here.