Breakfast was a buffet at the hotel. It was my kind of breakfast buffet, by which I mean the ration of bread to meat was at least 3:1. Their bread was pretty global- they had croissants, breads with glaze that I recognized seeing in the Mdnina in Rabat, French toast, the bread that makes hundreds of crumbs...
They had one thin meat, hard boiled eggs, and variety of things that could probably go on bread. I recognized syrup (for the French toast. Or for everything, because it's Morocco, so bread with syrup must be doubly-good) and I think some jams. I wasn't terribly adventurous there.
I was slightly more adventurous with the juices. By which I mean “I tried the red juice that everyone else was trying, found out it was beet juice, and didn't experiment any more.” The beet juice wasn't bad, it was just... beet juice. I've only recently become reconciled to the idea that beets make for tasty food. To have them converted into liquid form was disconcerting.
I think one of the juices that I didn't try was avocado juice. It was in the same kind of pitcher the beet juice had been in, so it was marked as being distinct from standard orange juice and... I don't actually know. I wasn't even adventurous enough to try the slightly paler juice that looked like pineapple (but probably wasn't.) But the green juice was in a special pitcher, and later we stopped at a gas station that offered avocado juice next to apple and orange. When I read that aloud with surprise in my voice, Nisrine essentially responded “Yes. So?” So it's definitely not an uncommon thing.
We'd had to choose our meal several days in advance, during the briefing. I'd chosen chicken with couscous because I liked chicken and hadn't yet had couscous in Morocco. Both of those things had changed by the time I was getting my plate of food. (Dislike of chicken isn't a permanent thing. But while I was in the Fes marketplace I heard chickens screaming. I didn't want to be eating one for them for lunch.)
It took surprisingly long for the conversation to get away from dead animals. Finally we succeeded by talking about senior pranks, and conversation flowed pretty freely from there.
They brought out appetizers first. They had beets, olives, carrots, lentils, etc. The beets were quite good in edible form, and worked decently well as relief after eating spicy. Would I drink beet juice after something really spicy? Well... probably not, provided I had any other options.
We went up to the roof and took some pictures. The restaurant was higher then surrounding buildings, so we could see a lot of roofs, and about four times that number of satellite dishes. Every house had at least two. Some had notably more.
Mahjitt: It's because multiple families live in each house, and they each need a satellite dish.
It made for quite the landscape.
Then we went to sit down again in time for the main course. I mostly concentrated on the couscous and vegetables. Ah, nice vegetables that can't scream or run around after their heads are cut off.
Dessert was a plate of apricots, plums, and honeydew. We'd eaten most of the plums, some of the apricots, and a decent chunk of the honeydew (I know it's called “honey”dew, but it's not supposed to be that sweet) and were pretty full when they brought out another plate.
The “Kuli, kuli, kuli,” was implied.
That night, dinner was a buffet. They had a row of cold items, mostly salads, hot foods, and desserts. Their cold dishes included two kinds of olives- normal black, and really spicy green (where's the beet juice when you need it?) Their cold items also had artichokes. I got 2 the first time, 3, the next, and 1 the time after. I'm surprised no one gave me a funny look, not even when I came back with dessert and an artichoke.
There were two or three kinds of mini-desserts. One was a chocolate flan. The other two were almond and caramel. I couldn't tell if there was any significant difference between them. They looked different (one was completely covered in powdered sugar. The other was not) but they tasted the same to me.
Mmm. Artichoke.
