When someone tells me about a trip they just took, I don’t ask where they went or what they saw.

I ask what they ate.

You can tell a lot from the answer. Some people pause before they respond. They’re the ones who remember the dish, the conversation. The ones for whom a meal isn’t a break between things, but the point of the day.

For many of us, food is not just part of how we travel.

It is how we travel.

Plan Around the Table

This is why, when we plan a trip, we plan the food first.

Before the hotels, before the itinerary, we know where we want to eat. At lunch, I’m already thinking about dinner. If the choice on a given afternoon comes down to one more sight or a meal we’ve been thinking about, the meal usually wins.

Marrakesh

A friend who had been to Marrakesh several times sent a Google Doc before we left. Her group had built it over a couple of years, adding to it after every visit.

Thirty-five entries.

Five were sights. The rest were restaurants.

These were my kind of travelers.

We spent an afternoon going through the list. The sights we could figure out as we went. The restaurants needed a plan. Half required reservations, which we made.

I am not, by nature, a planner. But with four people, limited days, and a city like Marrakesh, you need a little alignment before you land. So we built a loose structure around the meals.

Which, in the end, is what we would have done anyway.

We saw what we needed to see. Bahia Palace. Majorelle Garden. The madrasa. We walked the medina, got turned around more than once, and eventually stopped trying to find our way through it with any confidence.

We also ate well. Nomad on the rooftop, the medina spread out below. A long dinner at La Mamounia, the kind of place so enchanting that you almost forget to pay attention to the food.

The meals were good. Some were very good. None of them is what I remember.

The Gazelles

It was a Tuesday afternoon in the souk. Two hours of walking the derbs, the narrow lanes that wind through the medina with no real logic to them. At some point, you stop trusting your sense of direction and just follow whoever is in front of you.

Everyone was tired. And hot. And hungry.

We pulled out the list. Nothing nearby.

So we opened Google Maps. A place called La Cantine des Gazelles was four minutes away. The reviews, in English and French, were glowing. We had never heard of it.

I almost didn’t go in. Gazelles, I thought. What exactly are they serving?

Cornes de gazelle are the crescent-shaped almond pastries you find in every Moroccan patisserie. In French slang, a gazelle is a beautiful young woman.

Neither seemed likely to be on the menu.

It took about thirty seconds inside to understand.

The place is simple. Pink walls, open air, a few blocks from Jemaa el-Fna. Tables filled with Moroccans and visitors in equal measure.

We ordered without much discussion. Chicken tagine. Lamb. A vegetarian dish. Couscous.

Everything that came out was better than expected. Put down your fork and smile kind of better.

The couscous was deeper, more spiced than anything I had eaten before. The tagine was more flavorful than anything we’d eaten in the polished kitchens. At some point, the owner sent over fresh strawberry juice for the table.

At the end of the meal, one of us said we should come back the next day and order everything we missed.

We had a reservation that night. One of the harder ones to get.

We canceled it. Went back to the Gazelles. Just as good.

When we got home, the four of us went to a French-Moroccan place to stretch the trip a little longer.

Halfway through, someone said it.

I wish we were back at the Gazelles.