Most visitors eat one Moroccan meal in Tangier and it is a tagine in a restaurant with a menu in four languages. A Tangier food tour takes you to the places the city actually eats in: a bissara counter that opens at dawn and sells out by eleven, a stall that has made the same chickpea flan since the International Zone, a hole in the wall where the fritters come out of the oil into your hand.
Six tasting stops over two and a half hours, on foot, through the medina and the souks and up to the Kasbah. A Tangier food tour is a full lunch rather than a snack, and you will not need dinner afterwards.
Contents
Six tastings, mint tea, Moroccan pastries and a licensed local guide throughout. We meet at Lalla Abla Mosque, immediately outside the city port and five minutes on foot from the cruise terminal, and finish back at the same point.
A Tangier food tour starts at half past twelve rather than in the morning, for a simple reason: most of the good stops are shut at nine. Tangier eats late, and a tour built around a tourist schedule would take you to the wrong places at the wrong hour.
A Tangier street food tasting route changes with the season and with what the stalls have that day, but the shape stays the same. The first two stops are in the lower medina, the middle two in the spice, olive and fish markets, and the last two up in the Kasbah with the terrace views over the strait.
Your guide explains what you are eating, who makes it and why it exists in Tangier and not elsewhere — which on a Tangier street food tasting is most of the value. A vegetarian version is available with notice, and we need allergies at least twenty-four hours ahead.
Bissara and calentita are the pair that explain this city. Bissara is a thick fava bean soup with olive oil and cumin poured over it at the counter — breakfast for half of Tangier, and served in places that have no sign and no menu.
Calentita, known locally as karan, is a baked chickpea flour flan eaten hot in paper with cumin and harissa, and it is a direct inheritance from Spanish and Gibraltarian Tangier. You will not find it south of Rabat. Between them, bissara and calentita tell you more about the city’s history than any museum on the hill.
| Destination | Tangier medina, souks and Kasbah |
|---|---|
| Meeting Point | Lalla Abla Mosque, outside the city port |
| Start Time | 12:30 |
| Duration | 2 hours 30 minutes |
| Walking | About 2 km, with slopes and steps |
| Group Size | Maximum 10 |
| Languages | English, Spanish, French and Arabic |
| Included |
|
| Excluded |
|
| Format | Per person |
|---|---|
| Shared small group | €45 |
| Private group of 4 or more | €40 |
Skip breakfast. Wear shoes you can climb cobbles in. Bring a little cash for anything you want to buy in the souks along the way, though the tastings themselves are all covered. Moroccan cuisine and its regional differences are described by the Moroccan National Tourist Office, and the wider tradition on Wikipedia.
A Tangier food tour suits cruise passengers with half a day, anyone arriving hungry and unsure where to eat, and travellers who would rather understand a city through its counters than its monuments. It is also the single best first activity of a stay, because you leave knowing where to go back to.
It suits fussy eaters less well. Six stops means six things you did not choose, and while we will work around a dietary requirement, a Tangier food tour is not the place to be cautious. Come willing to try the thing you cannot identify.
Yes. Six stops over two and a half hours is a full lunch. Come hungry.
It is designed for them. The meeting point is five minutes from the cruise terminal and the tour finishes at the same spot with time to spare.
We use the places we eat ourselves, chosen for turnover as much as taste — on a Tangier street food tasting the busy stall is the safe stall.
Yes, with advance notice. Vegan is harder but possible — talk to us first.
A fava bean soup and a baked chickpea flan. Bissara and calentita are both northern Moroccan specialities and both are on every version of the route.
For two and a half hours and the price of a restaurant lunch, a Tangier food tour tells you more about the city than a day of monuments would. Want the sights as well? See our Tangier city tour, which covers the same medina plus the coast. Arriving by ship, start with the Tangier port transfer, or head inland afterwards on the Chefchaouen day trip from Tangier.
Photos: Annie Spratt / Unsplash · Louis Hansel / Unsplash · HamZa NOUASRIA / Unsplash
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