What is Moroccan street snack culture like?

Street snacking in Morocco isn't a tourist novelty — it's the rhythm of the day, and to eat the way locals do you simply have to graze your way through the streets between meals. Every hour has its snack and almost every corner has its cart, the food cooked in front of you, costing a few dirhams, and eaten on your feet in the swirl of the medina. Following your nose from stall to stall is one of the purest pleasures of being here.

Mornings belong to the fried things. Sfenj — light, chewy ring doughnuts pulled from bubbling oil, drained on a stick and dusted with sugar — are the classic dawn snack with a glass of mint tea, while a vendor folds and griddles square msemen pancakes beside him. Move into the afternoon and the savoury carts come out: glass cabinets of warm roasted chickpeas and salted seeds, hot fava beans in their pods, charred sweetcorn turned over coals, and roasted sweet potatoes split and steaming on cold days.

Then there are the bolder street institutions. Babbouche, the famous snail soup, simmers in vast cauldrons of liquorice-and-thyme broth — you spear the snails with a pin, drink the medicinal-tasting broth from the bowl, and the locals around you swear by it for everything from colds to digestion. Maakouda, crisp fried mashed-potato cakes, get tucked into bread with harissa for a cheap, brilliant sandwich, and grilled merguez or kefta sausages sizzle into batbout pockets at the food stalls of squares like Marrakech's Jemaa el-Fnaa.

My advice is to snack bravely but smartly: choose the busiest stalls with the fastest turnover, where everything is fresh and hot off the fire, and watch what the locals queue for. Go hungry, carry small change, and let the street feed you a little at a time — a sfenj here, a cone of chickpeas there, a snail-soup dare for the brave. It's some of the cheapest, most joyful eating in the country.