What's a good foodie Morocco itinerary?

For food lovers I plan around markets, kitchens, and the people who cook, not just monuments. I usually start in Fes, the country's culinary soul. We spend a morning in a local home learning to fold a real chicken-and-lemon tagine and a pastilla, shop the spice and produce stalls of the medina with the cook beforehand, and then do an evening street-food crawl — sardine sandwiches, bowls of bissara soup at dawn, sticky chebakia, and a glass of fresh orange juice from a stall the locals actually use.

From Fes we wind through the Middle Atlas, and I always time it to hit a weekly souk — Azrou or a smaller village market where farmers sell olives, amlou, mountain honey, and goat's cheese, and you can watch a whole sheep turn into mechoui over coals. These rural markets are where you taste the ingredients behind the famous dishes, and a picnic assembled from market stalls eaten by a cedar forest is one of the trip's quiet highlights.

Marrakech is the big food city, so I give it three nights of eating. One evening is a guided tour of the Jemaa el-Fnaa food stalls — snails in broth, grilled brochettes, merguez, and khlea — with a guide who steers you to the clean, busy stalls. Another day is a hands-on class in a riad or at a farm outside the city, where you make couscous from scratch and learn the rhythm of preserved lemons and chermoula. I also book one standout modern-Moroccan dinner so you see where the cuisine is heading, not just where it's been.

We finish on the coast in Essaouira, and for seafood there is nowhere better. You pick your fish straight off the boats at the port, hand it to a grill stall, and eat it minutes later with bread and a squeeze of lemon. We also visit a women's argan cooperative to taste fresh amlou, and end with a sunset glass of mint tea over the ramparts. Across eight or nine days you've cooked, shopped, crawled, and grilled your way through the real Morocco — which, for a foodie, is the whole point.