Lunch at Chez Lamine

I finally finished going around the Saadian Tombs. I thought it was an interesting place to see. The royal necropolis is one of the most important places in Marrakesh and it is not surprising to see a lot of people queuing up for it. In hindsight, I probably should have just head straight for this place before going anywhere else. Anyway, that is done now and I think it was time for some lunch. There are a few restaurants within the area but I have been hankering for some roast lamb. There was a famous one in the medina and I thought that I visited the place the previous night.

I was looking it up again the previous night and it was describing how the place has its own pit for roasting. I didn’t see any such pit where I had roast lamb head the previous night. So I thought that maybe I made a mistake, besides, I will not leave Marrakesh without eating the roast lamb. When I got there, the shop that was right beside where I had dinner the previous night was open. This time, there was a man busy chopping meat and handing it to customers. This told me that this was the place that I was looking for.

Their place was tiny and it didn’t even have a second floor. There were three tables and people would be sitting around the tables as much as they can. It was still early for lunch so I managed to get a seat. Across the tables, there was a circular pit which you might want to avoid. This is where all the roasting happens. Men would basically use poles to fish out the roast lamb out of the pit and hand it over to the boss for chopping. You can see how hot the roast lamb is and they were handling it with their bare hands.

There were people eagerly waiting for their roast lamb here, even people on the street. I looks like this place is really the place for roast lamb. Even the next door restaurants were getting from them. No wonder they looked at me funny when they said I would sit next door since they were totally separate stores. My roast lamb came with the standard Moroccan bread which I have learned to enjoy. I was given nice slices of lamb which wasn’t very fatty just as I asked for. To eat it, you need to dip it in the salt and cumin mix, which is just perfect for lamb. To top it all, it wasn’t even expensive. I was very glad to have found the place and I ended up eating there the following day. After all, it is not every day that I can eat roast lamb cooked like this. One thing to remember is to go there for lunch, once they run out of roast lamb, they close for the day.

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