What is a Moroccan breakfast spread like?

The thing that surprises first-time guests most about Moroccan breakfast is that it isn't a plate — it's a whole table. When a riad lays out breakfast for you, it arrives as a constellation of little dishes and bread baskets, and the joy is in grazing and building each mouthful yourself. There's no rush and no single 'main'; you tear, dip, spread and sip your way slowly through it.

Bread is the heart of it, and there's usually more than one kind: flaky square msemen, lacy honeycombed baghrir (the 'thousand-hole pancake' that drinks up butter and honey), crumbly semolina harcha, and good round country khobz. Around them sit the things to anoint them with — a jug of deep green olive oil, a pot of honey, a bowl of nutty amlou, soft butter, and homemade jams of apricot, fig or bitter orange. There's nearly always a little dish of olives, and often soft fresh white cheese (jben) too.

Then come the warm, savoury options, which vary by house and region. You might get eggs — sometimes a bubbling pan of khlea (preserved spiced beef) with eggs cracked into the fat — or a bowl of bissara, the thick fava-bean soup, on a cold morning. Some tables offer a saucer of cumin and salt for dipping a hard-boiled egg, or a little olive-oil-and-spice mix for the bread. And, of course, the drink: a pot of sweet mint tea, a glass of nous-nous coffee, or warm milk.

My advice is to treat breakfast as an event rather than a refuel, especially on your first morning. Sit down properly, work across the whole spread, and let yourself try a little of everything — the baghrir with honey, the bread with amlou, the olives, the cheese. It's one of the most relaxed and quietly luxurious meals of the Moroccan day, and a slow breakfast on a riad rooftop with the city waking up below is a memory you'll carry home.