Basic café food
Basic Moroccan meals may begin with a thick, very filling soup - most often the spicy, bean and pasta harira (which is a meal in itself, and eaten as such to break the Ramadan fast). Alternatively, you might start with a salad (often very finely chopped), or have this as a side dish with your main course, typically a plateful of kebabs (either brochettes - small pieces of lamb on a skewer - or kefta , made from minced lamb). Some small places also offer fried fish, a stew of beans ( loobia ), or a plate or kebab of offal such as liver or brain, which many Western tourists prefer to avoid, though in fact it can be very tasty. A few hole-in-the wall places specialize in soup, which they sell by the bowlful all day long - such places are usually indicated by a pile of soup bowls at the front. As well as harira , and especially for breakfast, some places sell a thick pea soup called baisara , topped with full-flavoured green olive oil.

Alternatively, you could go for a tajine , which is essentially a stew, steam-cooked slowly in an earthenware dish, with a conical earthenware "lid", over a charcoal fire. Like "casserole", the term "tajine" actually refers to the dish and lid rather than the food cooked in it. Classic tajines include lamb/mutton with prunes and almonds, or chicken with olives and lemon. Less often, you may get a tajine of fish or just vegetables. A popular alternative is kefta , a tasty tajine of meatballs topped with eggs. A tajine is to Moroccan cuisine what a curry is to Indian, and you'll find a whole variety of different ones on offer at Moroccan eateries through from the very cheapest to the most expensive place in town. Mopped up with bread, they can be unbelievably delicious.

Kebabs or a tajine would in all likelihood set you back little more than 25dh (£1.50/$2.50) at one of the hole-in-the-wall places in the Medina, with their two or three tables. You are not expected to bargain for cooked food, but prices can be lower in such places if you enquire how much things cost before you start eating. There is often no menu - or a board written in Arabic only.

If you're looking for breakfast or a snack , you can buy a half- baguette - plus butter and jam, cheese or eggs, if you want - from many bread or grocery stores, and take it into a café to order a coffee. Many cafés, even those which serve no other food, may offer a breakfast of bread, butter and jam (which is also what you'll get in most hotels), or maybe an omelette. Some places also offer soup, such as harira , with bread, and others have stalls outside selling by weight traditional griddle breads such as harsha (quite heavy with a gritty crust), melaoui (sprinkled with oil, rolled out thin, folded over and rolled out again several times, like an Indian paratha) and baghira (full of holes like an English crumpet). If that is not sufficient, supplementary foods you could buy include dates or olives, yoghurt, or soft white cheese ( ejben ).

Vegetarian/vegan options
Moroccan cuisine presents distinctly limited options for vegetarians - a preference which will meet with little comprehension in most of Morocco, though restaurants in some places are becoming more aware that tourists may be vegetarian. Tajines can be requested without meat (and, with some difficulty, without meat stock), but beyond these vegetarian casseroles, and ubiquitous omelettes and sandwiches, the menus don't present very obvious choices. Harira (bean soup) may or may not be made with meat stock, while most foods are cooked in animal fats.

It's possible, however, to maintain a balanced and reasonably interesting diet, so long as you're not too strict, and are prepared for a few problems outside the cities. If you're vegan, however, you will really need to come equipped and do a fair bit of cooking for yourself.

Provisions that most vegetarians will feel grateful to have brought include yeast extract, peanut butter, veggie pâtés/spreads, and stock cubes - which you can present to cafés (preferably a couple of hours in advance) for preparing your tajine. You might also take along a small Camping Gaz stove and pan - canisters are cheap and readily available, and in the cheaper hotels a lot of Moroccan people cook in their rooms.

Locally, there are plenty of beans, grains, seeds and pulses available, basic cheeses, excellent yoghurts, and a great selection of fruit and nuts; dates, figs, almonds and pistachio nuts can all enliven dishes. In the countryside, you may find fresh fruit and vegetables hard to obtain except during the weekly souk, but you can often buy from locals, who grow a small stock on their terraces.

In cafés and restaurants, asking for a dish sans viande ou poisson (without meat or fish) can still result in your being served chicken or lamb, so you'll need to take the trouble to explain matters very clearly. It often helps to talk of being a vegetarian in terms of religious restrictions or rules: concepts that Moroccans are themselves familiar with.

The most difficult situations are those in which you are invited to eat at someone's house - a common occurrence in the countryside. You may find people give you meat when you have specifically asked for vegetables because they think you can't afford it: a scenario in which you might decide that it's more important not to offend someone showing you kindness than to be dogmatic about your own principles. Picking out vegetables from a meat tajine won't offend your hosts; declining the dish altogether, on the other hand, may well end up with the mother/sister/wife in the kitchen getting the flak

Restaurant meals
More expensive dishes, available in some of the Medina cafés as well as in the dearer restaurants, include fish , particularly on the coast, and chicken ( poulet ), either spit-roasted ( rôti ) or in a tajine with lemon and olives ( poulet aux olives et citron ).

You will sometimes find pastilla , too, a succulent pigeon (in cheaper versions chicken may be used) pie, prepared with filo pastry dusted with sugar and cinnamon; it is a particular speciality of Fes.

And, of course, there is couscous , perhaps the most famous Moroccan dish, based on a huge bowl of steamed semolina piled high with vegetables and mutton, chicken, or occasionally fish. Couscous, however, tends to be disappointing. There is no real tradition of going out to eat in Morocco, and this is a dish that's traditionally prepared at home for a special occasion (on Friday, the holy day, in richer households; perhaps for a festival in poorer ones). As a general rule, you'll need to give two or three hours' notice for it to be cooked in a restaurant. In the home, remember that every Moroccan's mother cooks the finest couscous in the kingdom.

At festivals, which are always good for interesting food, and at the most expensive tourist restaurants, you may also come across mechoui - roast lamb, which may even take the form of a whole sheep roasted on a spit.

To supplement these standard offerings, most tourist restaurants add a few French dishes - steak, liver, various fish and fowl, etc - and the ubiquitous salade marocaine , actually very different from the Moroccan idea of salad, since it's based on a few tomatoes, cucumbers and other greens. You'll also probably have the choice of fruit, yoghurt, or sometimes even crème caramel for dessert.

In the text we have indicated what kind of price range a restaurant falls into. At restaurants described as "cheap", a typical meal (starter, main course, dessert and drink) will cost less than 80dh (£5/$8). At places described as "moderate", you can expect to pay 80-150dh (£5-9.50/$8-15), while anywhere likely to cost over 150dh (£9.50/$15) is described as "expensive". Obviously, though, you'll get more and better food in general at a moderate or expensive restaurant than you will at a cheap one.

A glossary of Moroccan food
Note that where food/dishes are commonly available in all kinds of restaurants, both French and Arabic words are given; in Arabic words, the letters printed in bold italics should be stressed.

Eating Moroccan style
Eating in local cafés, or if invited to a home , you may find yourself using your hands rather than a knife and fork. Muslims eat only with the right hand (the left is used for the toilet), and you should do likewise. Hold the bread between the fingers and use your thumb as a scoop; it's often easier to discard the soft centre of the bread and to use the crust only - as you will see many Moroccans do.

Eating from a communal plate at someone's home, it is polite to take only what is immediately in front of you, unless specifically offered a piece of meat by the host.

Cakes, desserts and fruit
Cakes and desserts are available in some Moroccan café-restaurants, though you'll find them more often at pastry shops or street stalls. They can be excellent, not generally too sickly and often made with nuts, especially almonds; there are infinite variations, like m'hencha (almond-filled pastry coils which sometimes appear covered in honey) and cornes de gazelles (banana-shaped pastries filled with a kind of marzipan).

Yoghurt ( yaourt ) is also delicious, and Morocco is surprisingly rich in seasonal fruits . In addition to the various kinds of dates - sold all year but at their best fresh from the October harvests - there are grapes, melons, strawberries, peaches and figs, all advisably washed before eaten. Or for a real thirst-quencher (and a good cure for a bad stomach), you can have quantities of prickly pear , cactus fruit, peeled for you in the street for a couple of dirhams in season.

Tea and other drinks
The national drink is mint tea ( atay deeyal naanaa in Arabic, thé à la menthe in French, "Whisky Marocain" as locals boast), Chinese gunpowder green tea flavoured with sprigs of mint ( naanaa in...
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Kif and hashish
The smoking of kif (marijuana) and hashish (" chocolaté ") has for a long time been a regular pastime of Moroccans and tourists alike. Indeed, in the 1960s and 1970s (or further back, in the 1930s), its ready availability,...
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