MOROCCAN CLIFF DIVING

The Marrakech barbecue sandwich

For someone who’s primary goal in travel is eating, there’s nothing more exhilarating than digging into some street food in an unfamiliar place. It’s a lot like cliff diving: you’ve got to find the perfect spot, there’s a possibility of severe injury or even death (i.e. listeria), and as a Westerner growing up with pasteurized nonsense and sterile sanitation practices, you say a serious prayer before you and your vulnerable stomach lining dive in. But it’s without a doubt the best meal of the trip so you throw caution to the wind and pull up your britches or your sleeves or whatever constricting item of clothing that keeps you from danger and delight. My four day jaunt to Marrakech was no exception to the search for exhilaration. I did, however, force my American stomach to stick to bottled water.

I ashamedly speak no French and even less Arabic, which is tricky in terms of ignoring the English internet guides and digging up non-touristy secrets from locals. After a lengthy exchange of hand gestures and Google translate searches, my friend and I were eventually able to ask our AirBnb host, Jamila, where she likes to eat in the neighborhood. Our wrinkled brows and uncomfortable smiles indicated to her that we weren’t going to find this place she recommended. In a gesture of above and beyond hospitality, she led us down the neighboring main street, to an unmarked restaurant, or essentially someone’s open-air kitchen. 

Three young guys in t-shirts and jeans were crowded around a grill in a blinding cloud of smoke—fanning away fumes and throwing down skewers. Jamila left us to our own devices and the grill masters grinned at us in a what-have-you-gotten-yourself-into kind of way. Which is precisely what I was hoping for. 

We half communicated with the Moroccan grill masters. The only french words I know coincidentally are food-related but there was a lot of pointing involved. I understood “kofta” and recognized raw chicken and shimmery liver. The great thing about street food is you can see what’s about to happen to you and there’s a few less surprises. The point-and-order method is more or less foolproof. I motioned at the marinated chicken kebabs and a couple mounds of kofta. The neighboring beef skewered between bite-sized fatty morsels calls to me, so we ordered two. I passed on the cow liver but give a literal thumbs up like a fool to the wrinkled black olives and double thumbs up to the parsley flecked green ones. 

The mystery parade commences with a piece of butcher paper—the placemat, plate, and the napkin all in one. As someone who prides themselves on being resourceful, I’m overly  appreciative of the multi-purpose table setting. 

Then it’s the basket of bread. Moroccan bread is particularly unique and exceptionally delicious. According to Michael Pollan’s Cooked, legend has it that the naturally leavened loaf was first discovered here. Someone forgot about a bowl of flour and water sludge in the corner and later found bubbles and the sweet smell of a pillowy dough that had doubled in size. Moroccans shape them into round discs and leave them to generate tons of fermentation and yeast pockets. They often roll the dough in semolina flour before walking their loaves down to the communal ovens every morning. The soft and pliable crumb and sturdy exterior lends itself perfectly to holding in mounds of meat and veggies. 

One of the grill masters stops by in his flip flops (close-toed shoes equal American-style sanitation practices, which I’m definitely not into on this particular journey) to drop off teacup-sized bowls of white bean and peanut stew, cutting our bread in half with a pocket knife and stuffing his hands inside to create the proper sandwich vessel. The soup is creamy and comforting, the peanut flavor subtle and soft. Then come the olives and the Marrakech sandwich condiment station: fresh blended tomato and parsley from the guy in flip-flops blitzing it up in the food processor next to us, finely diced red onions, a swap of spicy harissa paste, and bowl of dried herbs and spices—fennel and cumin were my initial interpretations.

The smoke builds behind the grill like the saliva in my mouth, and we’re finally given what we came for. I taste everything individually: the cumin and paprika crusted chicken skewers, the crispy beef fat that’s melted into its counterparts, the charred lamb kofta glaring in the harsh fluorescent light. I shove them all into my new Moroccan bread pocket and load it up with condiments. Deciding that the olives should also get to come out to play, I shamelessly put them into my mouth one by one to remove the pits and nestle them into my sandwich, like a bird regurgitating food for its young. 

Well stuff me with olives and call me mama bird because the build-your-own sandwich was divine. I was slathering on more harissa, stuffing more kofta into my bread, dipping the sandwich into the white bean stew, and popping olives into my mouth between non-olive bites. It wasn’t that I was becoming manic because it lacked flavor, I just wanted more of a good thing. 

After stuffing our faces like true dames, we were brought small silver teapot full of sticky-sweet mint tea and tiny glass cups—what I later discover to be a Moroccan symbol of hospitality. As if the barbecued meat fest wasn’t enough. 

Basking in the post-sandwich glory, we wiped our faces with the paper placemat-napkin and motion to one of the cooks meticulously aligning a mountain of parsley into even stems and leaves, that we’d like to pay. One-hundred dirhams later (the equivalent of about $10) we were on our merry way, smiling, thanking, and waving goodbye to all the cooks on our way out. 

I returned to the riat shocked to have never seen this sort of treasure in any Moroccan cookbook or restaurant, but I was sure there had to be some new-wave Marrakech sandwich movement surging in Brooklyn. I Googled variations of  “Moroccan sandwich” and was surprisingly disappointed: perfectly rounded dry pitas full of canned olives, discolored shawarma stand kebabs, deli meats, tzaziki covered meatballs. So I searched for Marrakech sandwich recipes and was flooded with touristy sandwich shop listings, even one featuring hot dogs. I did manage to find a small food blog written by an American mom living in Marrakech who referenced a similar finding with an accompanying photo, but described it as more Mediterranean that Moroccan. I’m certain there’s something out there, but I savored the ignorance.

We later discovered that this sort of barbecued meat sandwich situation in Marrakech is almost as common as the classic lamb tagine or couscous. You can find them on narrow and windy streets or at the main tourist markets at night. The smoke pours into the alleys and veils the small seating areas where locals and daring tourists hunch over their platters. We tried a few of them, but there was no sandwich like the first.

The next morning we walked down this same crowded street towards the center of town, this time in the light. The skinned cow head with its tongue hanging out and the lamb hooked to the outside of a butcher stand, blood trickling down the steps, assures me that our meat was pretty damn fresh. A man wheels a rickshaw of the sandwich bread through the streets and another sells piles of bright green parsley and mint on his cart. 

We pass by the shop, smoke spewing out even at 10 a.m. Waving to our new friends who motioned us over for a glass of tea, I think about how comforting it feels to have neighbors here on Bab Doukkala, even if only for a few short days. And how even more comforting it was to know that I would likely never eat this same sandwich again in my life, even if that guy in Brooklyn did open up a shop. There wouldn’t be as much smoke or flip-flops. There would be no surprise stew. And the server surely would not cut my bread with a pocket knife. Oh, how I love to go cliff diving.