How do I eat gluten-free at a Moroccan riad?

Riads are actually the ideal place to eat gluten-free in Morocco, because unlike a busy restaurant churning out covers, a riad kitchen typically cooks your breakfast and dinner to order for a handful of guests. That means they can adapt around you if — and this is the key — you tell them in advance. When I book a gluten-free client into a riad, I put it in writing at the time of reservation and confirm again on arrival, so the cook plans your meals rather than scrambling. Do this and the rest falls into place easily.

The naturally gluten-free heart of Moroccan food is broad: tagines (the sauce is vegetables, herbs and spices, not flour), grilled brochettes and whole fish, the fresh chopped salads, zaalouk and taktouka, eggs, olives, rice, lentils and chickpeas, and fruit. So a gluten-free dinner at a riad is genuinely abundant, not a sad plate of exceptions. The trick is just swapping the wheat-based accompaniments — and a good riad will plate your tagine with rice or extra vegetables instead of the usual bread and couscous.

The specific traps to name to the kitchen are: bread (in the basket and used to scoop — ask them to hold it), couscous (it is wheat semolina, not naturally gluten-free, despite some people assuming otherwise), msemen and baghrir breakfast pancakes (flour), pastilla/bastilla (its warqa pastry is wheat), briouats (pastry parcels), and harira soup (thickened with flour, so it is usually off-limits). Cross-contamination from shared pans and the bread everyone scoops with is the subtler risk, which is why the advance warning matters.

I always send gluten-free clients in with a printed allergy/intolerance card in French and Arabic spelling out 'no wheat, no flour, no couscous, no bread, including traces' — French is understood in most riads and Arabic covers the kitchen staff. For breakfast, ask for eggs, olives, cheese, yoghurt, avocado and fruit rather than the pancake-and-bread spread. Handled with that bit of advance communication, gluten-free travellers eat beautifully in riads; the people who struggle are the ones who assume couscous is safe or never mention it at all.