Vegan in Morocco: Fez & Meknes

So, the next stop along our journey was Fez. Fez! For reals! Very exciting. Each city in Morocco has an old, traditional part of town called the medina (full of winding streets and vendors and markets), and a newer part of town called the ville nouvelle (built during the French occupation). We found some eats in both parts of town in Fez... though, as always, much more for omnivorous Mr. Vegan Eats & Treats than for vegan Me.

Even if you are sometimes hard-pressed to find a big, warm vegan meal, you will absolutely never have a hard time finding yummy vegan goodies to snack on in Fez (or, really, most anywhere in Morocco). And I don't just mean the bread.

In the former Jewish quarters of Fez we passed shop after shop selling nuts and dates and dried fruits. There were also loads of vendors selling dried beans and rice and legumes and couscous... so if you were somehow staying in a place with a kitchen, you would be really stoked! But even these goodies make for a pretty tasty, high-calorie, and nutritious snack to keep you going as you wander the alleyways of the medina.

You can also readily find olives... as I mentioned in a previous post. The olive stalls are so beautiful! Some of the olive guys were particularly helpful about indicating which olives were super spicy, which I appreciated.

These are some of the spicy little guys!! They look lethal!

This guy is selling fava beans and rose petals. Favas were everywhere we went, and a few times we were served some vegan fava dishes as part of the light "Moroccan salad" course that starts a meal. On our big drive through the countryside, we also saw fields and fields of favas. Mmm!

Harira is a traditional Moroccan soup... it's a light tomatoey broth with veggies and beans in it. To be honest, I didn't really bother trying to figure out if the broth was vegan, but the contents certainly were. Generally when I travel I'm still really strict about being vegan. Even with the language barrier, I always try to ask or figure out if something is vegan. And I pretty much always err on the side of going hungry or eating another Clif Bar (sigh!), rather than ordering something I'm unsure of. But sometimes I employ a bit of a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. If something is clearly pretty much vegan - like some bread or rice or this vegetable soup - I won't persist about the details. I'm sure every vegan has a slightly different travel policy, but that's mine.

This was one of our favorite meals of our whole time in Morocco, at the wonderful little Marrakech Restaurant in Fez (ville nouvelle). The people were so friendly and gracious about tweaking their menu to help me get an all-vegan meal. First course was some lentils (I didn't trust these to be vegan), some very nice spiced carrots, and fresh cucumbers. And fresh bread, of course!

My main course was this veggie and chickpea tagine with the most heavenly fluffy fluffy fluffy couscous of all time.

And my dessert was a nice bowl of fresh fruit with fresh mint and freshly squeezed OJ. mmm!

Also, next time you are in Fez, look for the guy in the old Jewish market area selling sandwiches stuffed with socca/farinata. We spotted this beautiful young man, dressed in very traditional all-white Islamic dress (totally immaculate!) selling his sandwiches. He was friendly and super clean and had a lovely patient and precise methodology to making his sandwiches. Naturally, I assumed they weren't vegan, but I encouraged Mr. VE&T to get one so that he could tell me about it. Once he started eating it, he said "hey! I think this is vegan!" So, we went back and in our pathetic French, asked what the little cake was that he was putting in his sandwich, and cleared up that there were no eggs or butter in it. Then he made me my sandwich: One of those little round Moroccan loaves of bread with a slit cut into it to make it like a pita, with some warm socca-type stuff mooshed in, with salt and cumin and something a bit spicy sprinkled in too. Mmm! We didn't take a picture of him, but he was warm and lovely, and he gave me something nutritious and delicious, so he has a special place in my heart.

-- Meknes --

In Meknes, which I LOVED by the way, we bought fruit at the market and I ate another meal quite similar to the one pictured above from Fez, also quite good...

...But my favorite food picture from Meknes is this pretty picture of my mint tea in the big main square. The square was bustling with activities: families, children, men hanging out together, women hanging out together, traditional musicians, snake charmers (!), preachers, games, and more. It was rad!

Also, we took a little trip from Meknes to see Volubilis, a pretty good-sized former Roman city. We enjoyed the ruins, the mosaics, the wildflowers, and - best of all - the nesting storks with their babies!!

-- Casablanca --

We spent one very brief night in Casablanca... and didn't get to see much of town. We were going to head out for dinner, but when we set out from our hotel right at nightfall, we pretty quickly got the feeling that we didn't want to be heading back this way in the dark of night. So, I found a bakery selling some nice vegan little focaccia/pizza thingees, and then we stopped into a snacks and candies shop. You can see that Mr. VE&T doesn't mess around with his snack foods! Granted, there IS a bag of oranges there. Ha ha! In the end, he gave most of those cookies to the folks at the front desk at our next hotel, because he didn't want to eat them all.

One super fun find from the snack shop was these gelatin-free gummy candies! I bought one of each available flavor, but in hindsight I see that I should have bought out their entire supply of vegan gummy coke bottles (a former true love of mine). I was actually surprised at how hard it was to find halal/vegan gummy candies in Morocco. I was hoping to step into the promised land of vegan gummies, but this did not happen. Maybe such a place is only a myth, like the lost world of Atlantis! Nonetheless, I was happy to score these, and other than the coke bottles, I've still got most of them left to savor and enjoy in little bits.

Just to wrap up a few thoughts about eating vegan in Morocco... I did indeed eat one Clif Bar every day, and I was glad to have them. Generally, the dishes available to tourists are indeed meat-heavy, but I managed to get in some pretty satisfying warm meals, eat some traditional food, and stay true to my ethics. Fresh fruit and veg are easy to find, as are the snacks like nuts and olives. Not many people spoke English, but if you can hobble along a little in French, you'll be fine. Pretty much everyone in Morocco seemed to speak French, but they totally did NOT know the word "vegetalien" (vegan), so be prepared to ask - in French - for food with no eggs, no milk, etc. If you spend much time in the kitchen, you'll be able to look at most menu items and pretty quickly figure out what might be vegan.

And, I can't resist including a couple travel shots to cap it off... Here I am beaming with delight at all the beauty! That sacred Islamic architecture just knocked my socks off. Peaceful, refined, balanced, symmetrical, artful, elegant, imaginative, harmonious... I could go on and on.

Way down there in the shadows, leaning up against the archway, is a little tiny me... standing in the main gate entrance to the medina in Fez. Vive la Maroc!

Next up - Lisbon!

Vegan in Morocco: Chefchaouen

We took a long and adventurous road trip from Rabat to Chefchaouen. Chefchaouen is a small mountain town in the north of Morocco. We didn't end up loving Chefchaouen too much... it was really, really over-run with people hawking hotels and crappy trinkets to the tourists. But, it is a very beautiful spot, and you see why it must have had great allure in a less-travelled time.

Nonetheless, we enjoyed our time there... and the gorgeous drive along the way. And, we had one of the best meals of our time in Morocco there - which definitely bears mentioning.

We found a great little hotel, which recommended the restaurant Darcom. It was a very beautiful restaurant - full of little artisan details everywhere. I think there were 2 indoor levels and 2 more outdoor levels. Naturally, we went all the way up to the highest level! It was a tiny and picturesque little two-table balcony with candles and a night view of the town. It was also pretty cold by the end of our meal! Here we are, cuddled up with the menu.

I'll just apologize now for how dark all these pictures are - but these Moroccan restaurants are very serious about low, atmospheric lighting!

This is the first course. Sometimes restaurants called this "Moroccan Salad" - typically 3-4 small plates with different veggie courses. In this case there were olives (naturally!), some sort of split pea soup, and an eggplant puree. I didn't trust the split pea soup to be vegan, so Mr. Vegan Eats & Treats got to eat that one all by himself!

The omnipresent basket of bread. Every time I would swear that I wouldn't eat the whole thing, and every time, we ate the whole thing.

This was a vegan appetizer that I ordered. Sort of like a thick ratatouille spread. It was great on it's own, and even better with the bread. Full of rich veggie flavors and perfectly cooked. Yum!

This was my veggie tagine... couscous with seven vegetables, with some wonderful caramelized onions, and chopped peanuts on top. You eat a fair number of veggie tagines when you travel in Morocco, and the couscous is often just plain (but yummy) and the veggies are heavily steamed... but this meal, with the help of the onions and the peanuts, really became something special.

And dessert! I'm so glad I took this picture, because I had this dish a few times in Morocco, and it was a revelation! It's a simple dessert with chopped oranges, a light sprinkle of sugar and a light sprinkle of cinnamon. Mmmm. I mentioned in the last post that orange trees are absolutely everywhere, and I'm not kidding. So, you can find this lovely dish most places. Even if it is simple, it's so nice, as a vegan, to have a yummy and traditional dessert that you can order off the menu!

Chefchaouen is famous for its blue-ness: narrow winding "streets," stairways, and doorways all painted in various shades of light blue. I've got a thing for blue, so I thought it was pretty amazingly beautiful. Also, there are feral cats absolutely everywhere in Morocco. We were there in pregnant-cat-season, so we saw lots and lots of pregnant kitties, which I found significantly less heartbreaking than baby kitten season... so I was relieved. Generally, most of the cats look to be doing okay. More than once we saw a butcher or a fish guy in the market place who had a little crowd of kitties around his stall and he would toss them each a piece of something to eat. It was really nice to see these little street critters getting some friendly support.

Another cute kitty shot. Also black and white, but I swear it's a different kitty.

The next stop on our adventure was Fez, and so we set out on the open road. At one point we saw a little roadside stand and got ourselves a couple of sodas to quench our thirst and stay alert for the mountain roads. I don't ever drink soda at home, but I do let myself drink it when I'm traveling for some reason. I loved these special coke cans - and also, this transaction marked my only successful interaction in 100% Arabic!

By the way, did I mention that our drive was very beautiful? We ended up accidentally taking a rather dangerous route, so unfortunately I couldn't really recommend it to anyone. But, all's well that ends well, and we came out perfectly unscathed with some truly spectacular views and vistas along the way. We were there with perfect timing for a crazy abundance of wildflowers. There were just flowers, flowers, flowers and more flowers for our whole drive, which was probably about 5 or 6 hours long!

If you like wildflowers, you'll love little donkeys standing in fields of wildflowers. There were donkeys absolutely everywhere in Morocco, and these poor critters work so hard. You'd see them carrying huge loads of stuff AND a person sitting on top of them. And mind you, donkeys are little animals. Little animals who have a special place in my heart!

Next up... Fez!

Eating Vegan in Morocco: Rabat

The Mister and I are just back from a 4-week Grand Excursion to Morocco, Lisbon (Portugal), and Spain. Phew! So, over the next little while, I'll gradually be blogging about what I ate along the way. None of the places we visited top the list for vegan-friendly eating, but of the three, Morocco most definitely wins the prize. Unlike Portugal and Spain, people in Morocco appear to actually enjoy eating vegetables, and are more than competent at cooking them up in various yummy ways.

In general, during the course of the trip, I definitely experienced some genuine hunger pains... and even more than that, many instances of low-energy mental fog induced by lack of food. But I ate Clif Bars, and bread, and soda, and overall I usually managed to find something passing for a meal at least once a day.

In retrospect it sort of surprises me that as a devoted foodie, I don't have more pictures of food... but I think a great deal of what I ate was truly not noteworthy, and the rest of the time I was probably too damn hungry to care about taking pictures! All the same, there are some tales and photos to share...

So I'll start with the first city we visited, Rabat. I'll try to stay on-topic, since this is a vegan food blog. But in my rule book, vegan food blogs are also allowed to feature animal pictures. At the Chellah, an wonderfully evocative ancient site in Rabat, there are big storks with nests full of babies everywhere you look. Yay!

One of the many things I loved about Morocco was being able to eat the street food. I've been to India twice now, but I am a bit freaked out by the street food there. India is just that much dirtier and grimier... and I am wary to take the risk. But in Morocco, with a discerning eye, I felt up to the task! In Rabat, they have a pretty active street food scene - with guys selling all sorts of stuff, some of which is even vegan! We both enjoyed sandwiches from these vendors in the medina. In my case, mine was bread, fried eggplant, grilled peppers, onions, salsa, cumin and salt. Mmmmmm. It was definitely yummy enough that I would consider trying to recreate it on my own at home.

Olives are everywhere in northern Morocco... either cured and for sale in the market, or still on the trees in the countryside. Olives olives olives. The olive booths were so beautiful and seemed that in each town we visited, there were slightly different recipes. Mr. Vegan Eats and Treats really loved the lemony olives here in Rabat (made with preserved lemons).

Rabat is a mellow, coastal city... home to the King's palace, and the governmental center of the country. It was a great place to land and find our legs because (for the most part) the people were super friendly and not particularly interested in tourists. Our traveling methodology can probably be summed up in one word: wandering. In one of our wanderings we came across the Rabat surfing club. Coming from surf-centric Santa Cruz, we were feeling quite at home indeed. So we rested a while, enjoyed an apple flavored Poms soda, and looked out at the lovely sea.

See these little breads? They are E.V.E.R.Y.W.H.E.R.E. in northern Morocco. I can't vouch for the other parts of Morocco, 'cuz we didn't go there. But I'd be willing to bet money these little mini loaves are hard to escape. Sometimes they are made with all-purpose flour, and other times with a light whole wheat, and both variations are delicious. If you are also a vegan traveler, I don't need to tell you how many of these little buggers I ate. Many. But, lucky, they are always, always super fresh and quite pleasant to eat. This is the bread that came with breakfast, this is the bread that the sandwiches were on, this is the bread that came with dinner. Which is probably why this hard-working fella is making so many of them!

One night in Rabat we had dinner at the Riad (guest house) where we were staying. In the morning they confidently assured me that they understood my vegan request, but dinner proved this was not the case. The vegetable couscous came with two large pieces of lamb resting on top. NOT VEGAN. And the 2nd course was a chicken pastry. According to Mr. VE&Ts it was very delicious, so maybe I will try to veganize it. Nonetheless, he had two. Thank goodness for the starters, which were all clearly vegan... 4 nice little dishes with different veggie dishes: spiced carrots, eggplant spread, some cucumber spears with mint... Oh, and the bread. Still, it wasn't a total bust, because just look at how beautiful it was. It's hard to be too grumpy about that!

Moroccan Mint Tea. LOVE IT!!! Everywhere, everywhere. Anytime. Mint Tea. It's so delicious. Minty, sugary, and served piping hot. I loved it and drank it at least twice a day. As a traveller, it's such a nice way to rest, rehydrate, and do some people watching. I plan on doing some Mint Tea experimenting from the many recipes online and getting back to you soon with details on enjoying your own Moroccan mint tea.

Luckily, there is plenty of delicious fruit in Morocco. It was so fun to buy bananas and know that they were from nearby! Cool! And dates! And oranges oranges oranges. Orange trees lining the streets and government parking lots and parks. Many orange trees.

Last but not least, as we are heading out of town to our next destination, I am munching on some nut candies from the market place. Mr VE&Ts got nougat (not vegan), and I got this delicious almond bar. Mmmmmmm. I justified this enormous chunk of candy by calling it "nuts" and reminding myself that I needed some healthy nuts in my diet. Right?

Next up... the journey continues deep into the mountains of Northern Morocco!