Earlier this month I journeyed to Morocco with my good buds Julia, Monique and Patrick. We chowed down on many foreign meals I haven’t even known of before. It was quite the experience for your burger buddy writing this blog. We were there for about 6 days and spent one night in Madrid on the return back to the States. Let’s get started!

Walking around the Medina in Marrakech we saw a delicious looking sardine shop and decided to have an afternoon snack. I forgot the exact number but 6 of these big guys and an Arabic Coke only cost us twenty cents.

On our first night in Marrakech, we had a lovely rooftop meal at a Riad hidden deep in the convoluted Moroccan street system. We had an epic multi-course meal with the Chicken Pastilla (above) being one of the finest.

The next wave of food was a onslaught of plates that housed candied tomatoes, pumpkin with almonds, eggplant and many other dipping sauces. My meal for that evening was Lamb Tagine which, for lack of a better term, was epic.

The next day’s hike began with a trip to a garden that was home to an alarming amount of cacti. Afterwards we went to a hammam (Turkish bathhouse Moroccan style!) which suffice to say, I will not go into the experience here since words can only be uttered in person to do the story justice. Needing to cleanse my soul and stomach, I had a lovely gathering of lamb chops and provencale tomatoes at a nearby restaurant.

That night we went back to the Medina where food stalls litter the entire formerly empty square. We first started our feast with some soup.

The fava bean and lentil soup selection, while limited, tasted delicious. They gave us a huge chunk of bread to soak up the juices and some mint tea to cleanse our palates.

We next headed to a meat vendor since we needed something a little more unhealthier. We ate these tiny sausages with super sweet dipping sauce and of course, the same bread from before.

That horror show of a photo above is what you might think it is, sheep’s brain. Patrick wanted to tackle the delicacy and while initially hesitant, I complied. Honestly, the sheep brain tagine tasted very good. The texture was mushy, had a nice consistency and reminded me of beef stew. The only difficult thing while eating was staring at those heads in front of us and watching the guy to our right eat the brains raw. Come on dude.

Then we had ice cream!!!

The next day we hiked up to a waterfall outside a Berber village. At said village though, first we had a delightful lunch.

This tomato salad was a nice light start to a Berber style Moroccan lunch.

Not feeling too hot that day, I picked on Julia’s veggie tagine prepared in the style of the Berbers. The hike was long and full of awkward rocks but the waterfall was beautiful.

The next day we left Marrakech and headed to La Pause, a desert resort for the entire day. They had two adorable dogs who loved to follow us around and sleep everywhere we hung out. Below is a photo of sleeping Dingy.

For lunch at La Pause we started with a fantastic salad. I mean, look at that.

I had a beef tagine there with dates, pears and almonds on top. The pears gave it a nice sweet flavor I wasn’t expecting from a tagine.

We ended our meal with some lovely chocolate bread casually topped with nuts. I couldn’t capture any pictures from our meal that night since the lighting was far too dark for any images to do that meal justice.

The next day we departed back to Marrakech and hopped in a cab to journey to Essaouira (pronounced ess-sa-wee-ah, something we never got right). Known as the port city in Morocco, this place is the place for seafood. So what’s a food blogger to do? Photograph it and poorly explain to you how it was! Let’s go!

We heard the street seafood is excellent at Essaouira and it didn’t disappoint. You select which fish and crustaceans you’d like and they grill it for you. You can see part of our massive selection above.

We kicked our meal off with this lovely looking salad.

They tossed in these shrimp for free with our meal.

Above are spiny lobsters and sardines. The sardines were good but not as flavorful as the sardines we cherished on day 1. The spiny lobsters were a bit of a chore to eat. The shells were super prickly (as their name would indicate) but the resulting meat was small compared to the effort involved.

The sea bass was fantastic. I mean, that photo just looks so good. I wanna eat that photo.

We walked around the fisherman area for a bit and watched some fish and currency exchange between hands. Patrick and Monique later came back to this area the next day and bought some fish so that the street people could grill it for them.

That night’s dinner we went to Cafe Elizir and boy were we impressed. Everything from the neat and quirky interior to the service totally impressed us. Some standout shot selections from the meal were my sea bass and Patrick’s chicken tagine.

I was mostly out of commission the entire next day since the stomach bug I’ve been warding off had gotten the best of me but I was feeling healthy enough to venture out with Patrick and Monique that night for dinner.

I ordered the prix fixe which started off with this delicious and well plated shrimp tempura.

My entree wasn’t very Moroccan which was a nice relief from all my other meals I’ve been having to this point. I did make sure to keep it seafood while at the port city though. I ordered the Melo Meli noodles with baby shrimp. It had a sweet tangy flavor and was a nice light main course.

Monique had ordered this awesome risotto and whole shrimp plate that looked like a knockout.

The next day we flew to Madrid for our last day of vacation. This is a typical window in Madrid. Those people love their ham.

From a recommendation by a friend, we were told to head to La Finca de Susana. Culinary students man the kitchen and the food was insanely reasonable for the quality we were given.

The best appetizers were Julia’s heirloom tomatoes with mozzarella and Patrick’s Spanish sausage bocadillos.

My spare ribs Finca style were super sweet and candied. They fell immediately off the bone and the cinnamon couscous next to it was a nice addition to its flavor.

Biscuit ice cream with raspberry sauce. I almost didn’t want to share it.

Patrick ordered this thing based on the waiter’s recommendations. We still have no idea what it was called since it was named after a random person but the custard on top and the rest of the flavors worked so well together that it easily won best dessert that meal.

The final day we decided to have one last lunch before boarding our plane home. Julia ordered this lovely salad which had a great plating to it.

Patrick ordered what the menu had called “meatloaf” as his appetizer but was presented with this instead. While odd looking, the flavor was outstanding, with soft bread on top blending well with the ground meat under it inside that nice crispy outer shell.

This weird looking meat patty doused with sauce was my main course. While unappetizing looking, the flavor was exquisite. It was bung (meat I think), with a rice pilaf. Patrick ordered the same while Julia ordered the rabbit and frites and Monique had some fish.

Overall, my trip to Morocco gave me a wonderful opportunity to try some exotic dishes in a land completely foreign to me. I bought a new Canon fixed lens for this trip and was very pleased with the food and other shots I captured with it. To view the rest of the non-food related photos from the trip, you can click on any of the pics above or check out my flickr photo set.