Essaouira Morocco Food Tour - Delicious Moroccan Street Food Seafood & Breakfast in Essaouria

A huge heap of mashed potatoes. Oh good potatoes. Oh it's delicious. Hi I'm Jeff and I'm Angela and for some reason we call ourselves Pure D Tour. Catchy right? In the summer of 2021 we quit our jobs, left Canada and sold everything we own to travel the world full-time. Right now we're spending a month on the windy Atlantic coast of Morocco in a city called Essaouira and today we are going to partake in Angela's favorite activity. Food tour! Starting with breakfast this morning. We're gonna hit up this place that every morning on our morning walk we walk past it. It's always packed with locals, it's packed with tourists as well, expats. We don't know what they serve, we don't know what we're having but we're gonna go give it a shot. Do you want to have a pancake and I'll have an omelette? Absolutely. Yes. Thank you so much. We asked them what they serve here. They said they had omelettes and pancakes so we ordered one of each. Comes with what looks like black pepper, salt and either that's a cumin or a ras el hanout which is like a very popular spice mix they make around here. And the pancake has honey inside of it so right up Jeff's alley. Yeah these are delicious. These are just like the Turkish gözleme that we got throughout our time in Turkey. They're awesome. So we ordered cafe au lait and we're a little bit confused. Stir it up and you get your coffee. So that is breakfast. We are wrapping up there. That was 50 dirham and it was delicious. Let's see what else we can get into. The food tour is not starting off so great. Everywhere we've tried to go to and do something at they've been closed, they're not open. It's one thing after another so we've stopped at a place called Snack Memuna. So we got something here it's called a mixed taco which is different from tacos I've seen elsewhere. So it's a tortilla and it's been like pressed and inside it's got chicken, sausage and falafel. And they also put french fries, a bunch of sauce, a bunch of salad. Let's give it a try. Looks really good. That's really good. They got some kind of like spicy vinegar based sauce in there as well. That's an awesome lunch. The sausage. What kind of sausage is it? Turkey? Beef? All right let's give it a go. It's good. It's awesome. Yeah. They also have these french fries with this avocado. Next up, dinner at restaurant La Tolerance. Essaouira of course being right on the coast, super famous for its seafood. So we have ordered some seafood dishes here. Not to mention that the olives in Morocco have been amazing. We have ordered a lot of seafood here. Angela has ordered a monkfish and I ordered a, it's a pre-set menu that comes along with it. The first course they brought me out here is this goat cheese with salad on these little toasts that looked amazing. So we're gonna give these a little try. We're gonna dip into the olive oil. Is that honey not olive oil? It's honey. Sorry. The little dried fruits, the goat cheese warmed, the honey is fantastic. It's delicious. So here we've got a very simple and classic dish. It is just a grilled monkfish very simply done with lemon oil. Rice looks like it's flavored with maybe some saffron and some turmeric and some grilled vegetables. So beautiful, so simple. You can taste the freshness of the seafood here in Essaouira. It's really good. All right, I'm gonna give Angela's fish a try here. That's really good. That's good, right? I wasn't, yeah, I didn't really know what to expect with it and so much so I'm eating more of it. Yeah, it's the monkfish. It's very fleshy is the best way I can really describe it. It's meaty, it's not flaky like a normal fish would be. It's fantastic. I have a seafood pastilla. I have never had one of these before. I've ordered it specifically because it's traditionally Moroccan. So let's give this a go. Oh wow, it's delicious. Is it? Yeah. So packed inside of here is monkfish and shrimp and calamari. You can taste a bit of garlic in there. There's some saffron that's in there as well. It's fantastic. Trying a bite of Jeff's seafood pastilla. The crust looks super light and flaky and in addition to all the seafood that's stuffed inside of here, there's also like vermicelli noodles. I'm gonna give this a shot. I don't even know what to compare that to. Because of the fish flavoring and like the crunchy crust, it almost is like slightly reminiscent of fish and chips but it's got so much more going on and it's super delicious. So for dessert we got some tea. Of course you can't finish a meal in Morocco without some tea and then we've got some pastries and this is actually the first time I'm trying Moroccan pastries but my understanding is that a lot of the Moroccan cuisine, especially the pastries, has a lot of French influence. So looking forward to trying those. That's good. Flaky, not too sweet, really good. So I have no idea what I'm grabbing a hold of here. We just ordered this plate of pastries but I am going to give this little thing a go. You ate the whole thing. You have to share it with me. So the lovely owner of that Cafe La Tolerance was telling us that he chose the name of that place because he said Essaouira is a city of tolerance, that they welcome people of all races, nationalities. He says traditionally this is part Muslim, part Jewish so I thought that that was absolutely lovely. Afterwards he came out with his wife and they gave us this cute little place mat and also this gorgeous blue colored tagine pot. We had to turn down the tagine pot because simply we have nowhere in our luggage to take it. I feel really bad about it but such a lovely family-run place. Definitely go check it out. We've popped in for lunch at this place called Chez Zach. As Jeff has said earlier, we're kind of having a tough time kind of researching restaurants because we find some place that we like, it ends up closed or you know COVID has been hard on a lot of these tourist-oriented businesses. So we are on the rooftop now of this place called Chez Zach. The owner Zach has been coming out, he's been super sweet. We've ordered a couple of dishes to share. Let's check it out. I'm scared I'm going to fling it across. That's because I always did it for you. You want me to do it? Yeah I'm kind of scared I'm going to fling him across. I like one of those lamb chops so I'm waiting. If you fling it on the floor I'm gonna be so mad. I bet you will. Oh my gosh. Nicely charred on the outside so you get those crunchy black char marks but on the inside it's cooked perfectly to medium. It's not overcooked. So good. You didn't eat the lobster? I took a little bite of it and it's delicious. You can see from talking to Zach that he's like really proud of things that he makes and he takes pride in it. Yeah he's done a great job. What do you think? Oh my god that is awesome. It's cooked to perfection. I am making a mess of myself and I don't care. So we ended up finding this place from Google Maps just looking to see what restaurants were in the area. As we've told you multiple times now we've been having problems finding things. As Angela mentioned COVID has been tough on a lot of people. Very highly rated place according to Google reviews so we thought let's just try and see if they're opened up. Came and it's been amazing so far. Zach's awesome. He takes great pride in his food that he makes. Yeah he's adorable super friendly. Do you have any salad? I have not had any salad. It's so good. Nice fresh salad. It feels like going to going to a good friend's house and they cook good food for you. It's your house. Jeff was just saying to Zach that this is probably the best meal we've had since we've been here in Morocco and we ate a lot and we're really really full but because we enjoyed the food so much we had to order dessert. So what they brought us is homemade yogurt that has what looks like dates and figs and then these whole half walnuts, almonds and drizzled in the local honey. This looks amazing. Give it a shot. I'm gonna make a mess of myself. No come on like in North America we think of yogurt as like a breakfast food or like something you make but this is such a perfect dessert so good. Angela said I can't have any of this but I'm not buying it. She can get the hell out of here. Right? Holy hell the dates the nuts the yogurt and honey alone is awesome. Why would you make something like this at home? Because you're a bad person. It's ridiculous how it should be so simple. Oh it's so good. We are just finishing up here at Chez Zach. This is Zach the owner. He is phenomenal. I'm gonna leave a link a google maps link in the description below for you so you can find this place. If you are in Essaouira come here it's gonna blow your mind. It's fantastic. Thank you very much Zach. You're very welcome. Thank you thank you. That is going to wrap up our Essaouira food tour. We wanted to show you a couple of more places at least one more but it's been non-stop rain these last couple of days here in Essaouira. So we still have a couple of weeks left in Morocco so if there's anything else you think we should eat leave a comment down below. And don't forget to like and subscribe to see what happens next. Bye.