Are there good vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Morocco?

Vegetarians can eat wonderfully in Morocco, and I reassure worried travellers about this all the time — the cuisine is far more plant-friendly than its tagine-and-grilled-meat reputation suggests. Vegetables are gorgeous here, and traditional cooking is full of naturally meat-free dishes: vegetable tagines (think aubergine, courgette, carrot, potato, chickpeas slow-cooked with spices), the wonderful array of cooked and raw Moroccan salads, lentil and white-bean stews, zaalouk (smoky aubergine dip), taktouka (pepper and tomato), bessara, vegetable couscous, and bread with olive oil, olives and dips. Order a spread of salads and a vegetable tagine almost anywhere and you'll eat beautifully.

On the dedicated-restaurant front, the scene has grown a lot, especially in the cities travellers actually visit. Marrakech now has a genuine cluster of vegan, vegetarian and health-focused cafés and restaurants, particularly in the design-forward parts of the medina and the Gueliz new town — places doing creative plant-based Moroccan and international food, fresh juices, smoothie bowls and the like. Essaouira, with its mellow, artsy crowd, is similarly well stocked with veggie and vegan spots. And Chefchaouen, as I often note, is naturally one of the easiest towns to eat meat-free, thanks to its relaxed atmosphere and local goat cheese and bean dishes.

Strict vegans need to be a little more vigilant, and I'd be doing you a disservice not to flag it. Moroccan cooking uses butter (smen, a preserved butter, turns up in couscous and tagines), eggs, honey and sometimes meat or chicken stock even in 'vegetable' dishes, so something that looks plant-based isn't always. The fix is simple: learn to ask. A clear request — no meat, no butter, no eggs — is usually understood and accommodated, especially in tourist areas, and dishes like vegetable tagine, salads, bean soups and bread-and-dips are easy to keep vegan. In dedicated vegan cafés you obviously don't have to think about any of this.

A few practical encouragements. Riads will almost always cook you a vegetarian or vegan dinner happily if you ask in advance — home-style veg cooking is some of the best you'll eat. Breakfast is naturally veg-friendly: bread, msemen, olives, jam, fruit, mint tea, eggs if you want them. In rural areas and tiny villages, choice narrows, so the further off the beaten track you go, the more you'll lean on tagines, eggs, bread and salads — perfectly fine, just less varied. Learn the words for 'no meat' (and 'no butter/eggs' if vegan), keep some snacks for remote stretches, and you'll find Morocco genuinely accommodating.