Restaurant Morisco

After almost two days of being constantly on the move. I finally caught up to my schedule here in Chefchaoen. The weather was miserable as I wasn’t expecting it to be raining here and I thought it was also desert here. Chefchaoen is up on the mountains so the weather here is much cooler. All of a sudden I was glad I brought my cold weather jacket here. Not that it helps that much, my jacket isn’t meant to get wet for long periods of time so I would have to keep an eye on the jacket while I move around. I asked the staff of Hotel Al Kalaa where I can eat. They told me that there are a few eating places nearby and they pointed it out in the map. I thought it was going to be a long walk but it wasn’t. The gate to the medina wasn’t far from the hotel. The trick was getting to the restaurant area from the gate.

This was my first time truly exploring an old medina and I can only summarize it in one word – confusing. The medina is a maze of alleyways which go in every conceivable direction. There is no map for this. Google Maps can’t even begin to tell you where to go. The best way is to just go in an get lost a few times. I was fortunate enough end up where the kasbah is. This happens to be where the restaurants are. It was already low season for tourists but at least there were still restaurants open this time of the evening. I ended up eating at this place called Restaurant Morisco.

The typical Moroccan restaurant menu seems to be limited to a two main items, couscous and tagine. I already had couscous the previous days so this time I would want some tagine. The tagine would be perfect for this cold and miserable night in Chefchaoen. Tagine is basically meat stew prepared in a traditional tagine pot. Mine didn’t come with the tall lid though. My lamb tagine came with prunes which I thought was a strange ingredient for meals. It seems that Moroccan cuisine is fond us using fruit as a sweetener for their food. The lamb tagine comes sprinkled with almond flakes. For starters I had a bowl of yummy harira soup. It is some kind of tomato-based soup which is popular in this area of Africa. To wash it all down, I had some Moroccan tea. Nice for a cold evening like this.

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