Earth Cafe, Marrakech > Reviews (1)

I wish we'd found it sooner

On our last day in Marrakech we consulted the guidebooks for something new to do. My husband and I have been twice before and had already worked our way through most of the more obvious tourist attractions but we'd never been to the Bahia Palace in the south of the city. With guidebook in hand I managed to get us and my sister Aileen and her girlfriend Joyce there without getting lost and along the route I spotted signs for a vegetarian and vegan cafe called Earth Cafe. As a fishitarian I'd been getting pretty bored with the food on offer for non-meat eaters which leans very heavily on carrots and potatoes and gets dull very quickly so I was keen to try it on the way back.

With the palace appropriately visited (highly recommended) and all the other attractions in the area closed for lunch we decided to go and see if we could find the cafe. It was even listed in our guidebook – probably because it's the first and only veggie/vegan restaurant in Marrakech and quite possibly the entire country. The cafe is located on a side alley off the Rue Riad Zitoun Kdim which runs south easterly from the south eastern corner of Jemaa el Fna square. Look out for the signs and when you finally see a big arrow suspended above the street, you're in the right place. Head down the alley and there it is.

Let's do the Timewarp again......

I was immediately transported back to my sister's student days of hanging out at the Reading Wimmin's centre – this place is just so '1980s wholesome'. If it were not for the total absence of raffia mats and macramé wall hangings it would have been like stepping into a time warp. I think the retro look was probably entirely unintentional but it made me smile none the less.

The ground floor has a tiny courtyard stuffed with scruffy looking chairs and tables with a couple of low ceilinged rooms off the courtyard. Up the stairs everything is painted in bright garish colours with deep orange walls contrasting pleasantly with deep blue doorways and not so pleasantly with a deep purple door to the toilet. The roof is covered with thick clear plastic to protect diners from the elements but I'd hope that can be retracted in the summer as it was already pretty warm in early April.

The menu is available in English and French and is not easy to read since it's written on mirrors on the wall. They keep it pretty simple with four or 5 vegetarian dishes and a similar number of vegan options. I'm sure though that if you wanted the vegetarian dishes 'veganised' they'd be happy to take out the cheese and eggs where appropriate because everything is cooked fresh from scratch. They also make fresh juices but if carrot and beetroot aren't your thing, they aren't so obsessive as to deny you a Coke or Diet Coke if that's what you fancy.

A whole wall of things I can eat and want to eat

We ordered three glasses of 'carrot, ginger and orange' juice and my brave sister went for the 'beetroot and something or other' juice. The colours were stunning with the 'carrot plus' coming out a deep mango orange in colour and the beetroot juice looking exactly as you'd imagine it would.

Sadly it tastes exactly the way you expect too. I forgot to check up with her later but I was predicting serious pink wee problems after at glass of that. Nothing that looks and tastes like beetroot juice could possibly fail to do you good. Next time you're contemplating over-priced funky juices in a Wagamama, keep in mind you can get a great big glass of lurid orange or purple juice in Marrakech for just 20 Dirhams (about £1.60).

Between us we all managed to choose something different for our meals which is good for review-writing research but not much fun for the kitchen. My husband was trying to be good by ordering a warm salad of seasonal veg with goat cheese which came with a balsamic and olive oil dressing. I ordered a filo parcel stuffed with pumpkin, spinach, poached apple confit and goat cheese. Aileen went for the vegan veggie burger and Joyce ordered spring rolls with blue cheese.

We sipped our lurid drinks and checked out the goods in the cafe's little shop – lots of home pressed oils, odd crafty things and bits and bobs. The waitress brought us some wholemeal bread with oil to dip it in which I guessed was probably argan oil rather than olive oil since Morocco doesn't half bang on about argan oil. For those unfamiliar with argan, it's the uniquely Moroccan tree that goats love to climb because they are addicted to the fruit. If you've ever seen crazy photos of goats up trees, you can bet your money that's an argan tree. The cafe offers cookery classes most days for 200 Dirhams per person which includes lunch and a bottle of oil. That really is more of a mission to spread the word of vegetarianism than a financially viable option since lunch can well cost you half that amount.

Good things are worth waiting for

Service isn't fast because everything is cooked from scratch in a tiny kitchen. We weren't in a hurry even though it was nearly 3pm by the time we'd ordered. When the food arrived we were all shocked about the size of the portions. My husband's salad was not exceptionally massive but he didn't need to worry because none of the rest of us could get through our enormous dishes so he got everyone's left overs. My filo parcel was about 2 inches thick and 4 or 5 inches square and was sitting on top of a bed of pumpkin and carrots. Joyce's spring rolls were about 6 inches long and a couple of inches thick – not at all what she'd expected. The veggie burger was about the size of a babies head and we all had to help out to get it finished.

My parcel was really just a bit too big to manage and I'd probably have loved it twice as much if it had been half the size. The goat cheese was not terribly 'goaty' but the blend of spices was refreshing after several days of extremely bland Moroccan food. The blue cheese in Joyce's spring roll was less intense than I'd have really wanted but Aileen's veggie burger had lots of ginger in it which gave it a great bite.

Puddings were absolutely impossible to squeeze in after quite so much food. Despite us all claiming our dishes were enormous, somehow we got to the end of the meal with very little in the way of leftovers.

It had been a long time since we'd finished our juices so we ordered a couple of diet cokes and Aileen ordered a pot of 'yogi tea' just to find out what it was. It turned out to be a large pot of grass and leaves in a hot water that didn't taste of much but was undoubtedly very good for you.

Price and Recommendation

Our meals came to under 400 Dirhams (approx £32) for the four of us which was excellent value – to be honest we weren't really hungry again for a very long time. I wish I'd found this place sooner and I'll definitely hunt it down as soon as I go back to Marrakech. I think my meat-eating companions would have lynched me if they'd been asked to go again but I absolutely loved it and hope the place will do really well. They've just opened a branch in Essaouira so there must be plenty of demand from disgruntled veggies and semi-veggies who are sick of couscous and carrots.