Oran eats like nowhere else in Algeria: Spanish calentita became the karantika sold hot on every corner, French baguettes carry harissa and kefta, and the port fires up rougets at noon. Three days of markets, grills and mint tea.
Oran's densest souk: mounds of Sig olives, dried Ghardaïa deglet nour, cumin and ras el hanout scooped by the ladle, plus semolina and smen. Traders set up around 07:00 and thin out by 13:00, so mornings are the whole show.
Karantika — a chickpea-flour flan baked in wide tin trays, cut warm, dusted with cumin and harissa — is Oran's Spanish inheritance (from calentita). Vendors slice it into a half-baguette to make the everyday lunch of the quarter.
The neighbourhood market below the centre, quieter than M'dina Jdida: rows of preserved lemons, fresh coriander and mint by the armful, sheep's heads for bouzelouf, and cheesemongers selling jben, the fresh curd eaten with bread and honey.
The pedestrian spine of the colonial centre is lined with pâtisseries stacking makroud, griwech, zlabia and French-style mille-feuille side by side, with café tables where qahwa arrives thick and sweet in small glasses.
Algeria's great natural harbour, 6 km west, where the trawlers land sardines, anchovies, red mullet, bonito and langoustines. The auction sheds run mid-morning and the quayside stalls sell whatever the night boats brought back.
The beach town west of Oran is where Oranais drive for lunch: whole daurade and rouget over charcoal, fried calamari, crevettes with garlic, and chorba with the bread basket, eaten on terraces facing the bay.
Oran's oldest quarter, under the Spanish ramparts, keeps the home-style tables: tchakhchoukha (torn semolina galette in tomato-and-chickpea sauce), berkoukes, and Friday couscous with lamb, chickpeas and courgette.
The 1930s art-deco hotel on the Front de Mer keeps one of the few licensed bars in the centre, pouring Coteaux de Mascara and Coteaux de Tlemcen — the reds grown on the hills inland from Oran since the French vineyard era.
Oran's wholesale produce market, loudest between 06:00 and 10:00: crates of Mostaganem tomatoes, Relizane melons, mandarins from the Habra plain, and sacks of chickpeas and dried broad beans destined for the city's kitchens.
The workaday quarter grills mhadjeb — semolina crêpes folded around onion, tomato and pepper — on flat plates in shop windows, served beside bowls of chorba frik, the wheat-and-lamb soup that opens every Ramadan table.
Confectioners here work kalb el louz (semolina-almond cake soaked in orange-blossom syrup), qneidlate, samsa and honey-drenched zlabia in copper trays, most of it sold by the kilo for weddings and holidays rather than by the slice.
The clifftop road east of the city is lined with café terraces and grill shacks looking down on the Mediterranean — grilled sardines by the dozen, fresh orange juice, and mint tea drunk long into the evening as families arrive.