Is paying for a rooftop restaurant worth it?

Rooftops are part of the Marrakech magic, and I will never tell you to avoid them entirely — watching the sun drop behind the Koutoubia minaret while the call to prayer rolls across the Medina, mint tea in hand, is a memory worth paying for. The atmosphere is genuinely the product, and at sunset it is hard to overstate how lovely it is.

The honest trap is conflating the view with the food. Many rooftop restaurants know the panorama sells itself, so the kitchen coasts — you pay a premium for a so-so tagine you could get better and cheaper at a humble ground-floor spot. There are exceptions where the cooking matches the setting, but as a rule, the more spectacular the view, the more carefully I scrutinise the menu and recent reviews.

So here is how I play it, and what I tell guests: treat the rooftop as a drinks-and-view experience, not necessarily a dinner. Arrive an hour before sunset, order tea, juice or (where served) a glass of wine, soak it in for the golden hour, then move on to eat somewhere chosen for its food. That way you bank the atmosphere without overpaying for a mediocre main, and you get the best of both.

Verdict: worth it for the moment, situational for the meal. If you find a rooftop with a real reputation for cooking, by all means do the full dinner. Otherwise, split the experience — sunset upstairs, dinner where the kitchen earns it. The view is the splurge that is almost always worth it; the food up there is the one to be sceptical about.