What seafood is the Moroccan coast known for?

Morocco has over 3,500 kilometres of Atlantic and Mediterranean coastline, and the cold Atlantic current makes it one of the planet's richest fishing nations — it's the world's largest exporter of sardines. So when guests think 'Moroccan food' and picture only desert tagines, I love taking them to the coast and watching the penny drop over a plate of charcoal-grilled sardines, glistening and smoky, squeezed with lemon and eaten with your fingers.

Essaouira is my favourite seafood theatre. At the port, the day's catch is laid out on ice — sea bream, sole, red mullet, monkfish, langoustines, spider crab — you choose what you want, they weigh it, grill it over open flames metres from the boats, and you eat it at a plastic table with bread and a tomato-and-onion salad. It's gloriously simple and impossibly fresh. Up the coast, Oualidia is famous for its oysters, farmed in a tranquil lagoon and served barely chilled.

The defining flavour is chermoula — a vivid green marinade of coriander, parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, preserved lemon and olive oil that Moroccans slather on fish before grilling, frying or baking. A whole sea bass stuffed with chermoula and roasted is a coastal classic. There's also a seafood pastilla in places like Casablanca and Essaouira: the same crisp warqa pastry, but wrapped around shrimp, calamari and white fish in a tomato-rich sauce — savoury, not sweet.

Don't overlook the street-level joys either: fried fresh anchovies, calamari, and 'fish sandwiches' from harbour shacks in Agadir and Casablanca. I always slot a coastal day or two into longer trips — after the inland spice and slow-cooked richness, a charcoal sardine lunch by the Atlantic is the lightest, brightest reset, and a side of Morocco most first-timers never expect.