Restaurant Hamadi — Traditional Moroccan, Tangier
Restaurant Hamadi is located in the heart of the Tangier medina — the historic centre that the international literary community of the 20th century made famous, where Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, and the Beat Generation found the city’s most compelling atmosphere. The restaurant serves the traditional Moroccan cooking that this medina has produced for centuries with the conviction of a kitchen that regards the tradition as a living practice rather than a heritage product.
The cooking covers the Moroccan culinary canon at its most authentic: the bastilla in the Tangier manner — subtly different from the Fez version in its spicing and its pastry work — the lamb and chicken tagines slow-cooked with the preserved lemons and olives of the northern Moroccan tradition, and the harira soup that the city has been making since the first mosque was built here.
The mint tea service at Restaurant Hamadi is performed with the ceremony that the Moroccan tradition demands: the glass poured from a height, the first glass sweet, the succession establishing the evening’s rhythm.
Restaurant Hamadi is the Tangier restaurant for those who want to understand the medina’s cooking tradition rather than the tourist riad’s interpretation of it: the honest Moroccan table in the city that invented so many of the stories that are told about North Africa.
Best Occasion: Birthday
Traditional Moroccan cooking in the heart of the Tangier medina, with the bastilla and tagines that the city has been preparing for centuries: Restaurant Hamadi provides a birthday dinner in the most historically resonant context the city offers.
Best Occasion: Solo Dining
The medina setting, the traditional Moroccan cooking, and the mint tea service performed with ceremony: Restaurant Hamadi is one of the most culturally authentic solo dining experiences in northern Morocco.