What street snacks are typical in Morocco?

Some of my favourite eating in Morocco happens standing up, on a street corner, for the price of a coffee. Street food here is unpretentious, freshly cooked in front of you, and genuinely delicious — a whole parallel cuisine to the slow-cooked tagines, and the fastest way to taste how Moroccans actually eat day to day. I always tell guests to graze the stalls and save room for a dozen small things.

Mornings belong to griddle breads. Msemen — flaky, folded square pancakes pan-fried and eaten with honey, amlou or cheese — are everywhere, as is harcha, a buttery semolina griddle bread with a cornbread-like crumb. Then there's sfenj: light, chewy doughnuts fried fresh, dredged in sugar, threaded onto a palm-leaf string and eaten hot. With a glass of mint tea, it's the perfect Moroccan breakfast on the move.

Savoury snacks run deep. Maakouda are crisp mashed-potato fritters, often tucked into bread with harissa as a sandwich. Steaming bowls of babbouche (snails in a peppery, herbal broth) and bissara (fava soup) are sold from carts, especially in winter. Grills perfume the medinas at dusk — beef and lamb brochettes, spicy merguez sausages, and kefta. In Marrakech's Jemaa el-Fnaa, the night stalls are a street-food festival in their own right.

And the small joys keep coming: paper cones of roasted chickpeas or fava beans, salted lupini, cactus fruit peeled by hand from a cart in summer, olives and preserved lemons by the scoop, and freshly squeezed orange juice for a few dirhams. I build a guided street-food crawl into many city days — done with a local who knows the cleanest, busiest stalls, it's safe, cheap, and the most fun you'll have eating in Morocco.