Mechoui Alley. A strip of vendors all serving one expertly prepared animal, lamb. The lamb is whole roasted within the restaurants in a hole in the ground.
We ate four times in Meshoui Alley. The first time, and our first main meal in Marrakech, we dove in head first (don't excuse the pun) and went for half a sheep's head. The meat around the cheeks was pretty much the essence of lamb. So good.
Nix let me have the eyeball and boy o boy, wowee was it good. After pulling off the cornea (I think?) I popped it in and savoured its gelatinous, lamby goodness.
But the highlight? The ear. Watching hours of Bizarre Food came to the fore here as Nix watched me peel the skin off the ear and divvy it up. Somehow the ear had taken on a smokey character beyond belief and left you asking why don't sheep have more ears?
Next up was the alleys namesake, mechoui. At 11am they begin to take out the roasted lambs and carve them up with the premium cuts (mechoui) being served fresh in the restaurant with cumin salt, bread and the ubiquitous mint tea.
We'd waited a long, long, long time to have this this and it hurts me to say that we were maybe a bit disappointed by it. It was beautiful lamb but it wasn't special lamb.
The lamb that isn't served fresh as mechoui is carved up and placed in clay pots with a selection of spices, preserved lemon and water and then taken to the local hammam to sit in the coals and steam for a few hours with the end result known as a tanjia, a Marrakech speciality. The resulting lamb quite literally melts in your fingers (there is something primitively satisfying about eating with your hands) and is the kind of dish that leaves you sad when you're nearing the end of it.
Patisserie Belkabir
We'd walked past this man's stall in the souk multiple times before we finally relented and picked up a box for our journey out into the desert. There are two stalls next to each other that look as though they sell the exact same produce however one's pastries are covered in bees and the others is not. We followed the bees' lead.
Breakfast
This was our breakfast most mornings from a place in the northwest corner of the Djemaa. Bessara (fava bean soup), messemen (a roti like pancake) and a pot of mint tea.
We waited until our final night to try these. Silly us.
Some amazing sort of crunchy outside, chewy inside, Macaron made of macaroons type thing. Delicious.
Barrie-ometer of "Feel" - an unpleasant but spectacularly fruitful enema
