A  Banquet and Typical Celebration in Marrakech

If you want to enjoy the excellent, typical cuisine of Morocco the best place to spend the evening is in Chez Ali, on the outskirts of Marrakech and in the heart of a field of palms. It is a story straight from the pages of the Thousand and One Nights that invites you to discover the folklore of this beautiful country. Built like an enormous Kasbah, Chez Ali receives visitors at the end of a path guarded by guards on horseback. We entered the enormous place and dancers and singers accompanied us to a Berber tent. Then the dishes began to arrive: harira, mutton soup with lentils and cilantro; the bastel’la, fila dough stuffed with pigeon, almonds, onions and flavored with cinnamon and saffron; beef tajine, with dried plums and almonds cooked in the typical clay oven with conical top; chicken tajine with lemon preserves, mechoui, whole mutton, cooked in a clay oven barbeque style and we concluded with traditional couscous, wheat semolina accompanied by vegetables. It is a banquet fit for a king graced with exquisite desserts and mint tea. Dinner was accompanied by the finest Moroccan wines such as Val D’Argan, Mogador Rouge and La Gazella of Mogador, selected wines from the Val D’Argan, near Essaouira.

 

 

 

At the end, everyone gathered around the immense plaza to see the dance and song spectacle put on by the dancers and singers that had wended their way through the different tents during dinner. The show ended with the Fantasy, when horseback riders shoot their rifles at the same time.

Chez Ali is not a traditional restaurant but it is, no doubt, a very typical place and a magical experience.    

 

 

Text: Patrick Monney ± Photo: Patrick Monney.