What's a typical Moroccan restaurant like?

There honestly isn't one 'typical' Moroccan restaurant, and that's something I love about eating here — the spectrum is enormous. At the humble end is the local eatery or grill: plastic or simple wooden tables, a glass case or brazier out front showing the day's meat and fish, a short menu of tagines, couscous, brochettes and salads, and a steady local crowd. These places are cheap, unpretentious and frequently where the best everyday food is. At the other extreme sits the theatrical riad restaurant — a restored courtyard mansion with intricate zellij tilework, carved plaster, low cushioned banquettes, lanterns casting patterns, rose petals on the table and sometimes live oud or gnawa music. Same cuisine, wildly different theatre.

Whatever the tier, a few threads run through nearly all of them. Bread arrives instantly and free, and it never really stops. Mint tea — poured from height into little glasses — bookends or accompanies the meal. The food often comes to share rather than as rigid individual plates, especially the cooked-and-raw salad spreads to start. And the pace is unhurried by design: a Moroccan meal is an event, not a refuelling stop, so the table is yours for as long as you want it, and rushing you out is considered rude. If you're used to brisk Western service, this is a rhythm to settle into rather than fight.

The set-menu riad dinner deserves its own mention because it's such a quintessential Moroccan experience and one I send almost every guest to at least once. You'll often sit at a low table on cushions in a candle-lit courtyard, and a multi-course feast unfolds: a parade of small salads, then perhaps a pastilla or harira soup, then a showpiece tagine or couscous, then fruit and pastries with tea — sometimes with musicians playing as you eat. It's atmospheric, generous and the kind of evening people remember for years. It's pricier than a local grill, of course, but as a once-or-twice splurge it captures the romance of Moroccan dining perfectly.

Then there's the whole informal world that's arguably the most 'typical' of all: the street and square. Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakech transforms at dusk into a sprawling open-air food court of smoking grills and shared benches; every city has its snack streets, juice carts and hole-in-the-wall sandwich makers. Eating standing up at a busy stall, elbow to elbow with locals, is as authentically Moroccan as any candle-lit courtyard. My honest advice is to taste across the whole range on one trip — a grill lunch, a street-food graze, a riad feast — because no single one of them is 'the' Moroccan restaurant. The variety is the experience.