Marrakech cooking runs on slow heat and buried pots: lamb steamed overnight in underground ovens, tanjia sealed in clay and left in the hammam furnace, spices ground to order in Rahba Kedima. Three days of eating past the tourist menus.
The new city's covered produce market on Rue Ibn Toumert, busiest 08:00–11:00: Ourika-valley strawberries, Sefrou cherries in June, whole hanging lamb, Essaouira sardines on ice, and juice men pressing oranges for 5 dh a glass.
A short lane of pit ovens off the square's north-east corner where whole lambs steam overnight in clay-lined underground furnaces. Vendors carve straight from the carcass onto butcher paper; sold by weight from around 11:30 until it runs out.
The old corn market, now a square of apothecary stalls stacked with saffron, ras el hanout, dried rosebuds, argan oil and live chameleons. Traders blend ras el hanout to order — 20-plus spices ground in front of you.
Inside the restored 1910 pasha's palace, a coffee room serving over 200 single-origin and blended coffees in gold pots, poured tableside. The Marrakech Mint blend and the orange-blossom pastries are the reason to queue.
A non-profit in Gueliz training disadvantaged women as cooks. Morning classes cover chicken-and-olive tagine, couscous rolled by hand, or msemen; you eat what you make in the garden restaurant afterwards.
A 17th-century house opened up around a courtyard of banana palms and green zellige, hidden behind a plain medina door. The kitchen does lighter Moroccan cooking: kefta tagine with egg, zaalouk, and lemon-verbena iced tea.
Madame Hakima's Gueliz pastry house, open since 1993 and the reference for Moroccan sweets: kaab el ghazal stuffed with orange-blossom almond paste, briouat dipped in honey, and ghriba coconut biscuits sold by the kilo.
Run entirely by women since 1987 and the standard-setter for Fassi cooking in Marrakech: pigeon pastilla dusted with cinnamon sugar, lamb tagine with caramelised pear, and a choice of six couscous varieties.
A converted schoolhouse behind the Kasbah mosque serving Moroccan breakfast — msemen with amlou, beghrir sponge pancakes, khlii-cured beef with eggs — plus its cult camel burger, and evening storytelling and gnawa sessions.
The Gueliz institution for tanjia, the bachelor's dish: beef or lamb sealed with preserved lemon and smen in a clay urn, then buried in the ashes of a hammam furnace for hours. Served with bread and nothing else.
The old Jewish quarter's market near Place des Ferblantiers, and the city's best stalls for preserved lemons, salted capers, dried figs and barrels of olives cured with harissa, garlic or bitter orange peel.
A basement cocktail lab off Rue Moulay Ali working with rotary evaporators and local botanicals — saffron, orange blossom, argan, Atlas thyme — with a short mocktail list built to the same standard.