Best Breakfast in Tangier — Where Morocco Meets the Mediterranean

Tangier's position at the meeting of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, a short hop from Spain, has shaped a breakfast culture unlike anywhere else in Morocco. The Moroccan spread is all here — msemmen and harcha griddle breads with honey, jam, soft cheese and amlou (the almond-argan-honey spread), baghrir pancakes, olives, eggs and mint tea — but so is a strong Spanish and international influence, a legacy of the city's famous international-zone era. You will find churros, Spanish-style pastries, and coffee served as café con leche alongside the Moroccan nous-nous.

The city's historic cafés are the classic setting. Around the Petit Socco (the small square at the heart of the medina) and the Grand Socco (the great square linking the medina and the new town), old cafés with a literary, faded-glamour air have served breakfast and coffee for generations — Tangier's mid-century reputation as a haunt of writers and artists still lingers in these rooms. A coffee, a pastry and the morning papers here is a Tangier institution.

For a more local morning, medina stalls fry sfenj doughnuts fresh and ladle out bissara (fava-bean soup), and you will find calentita (also called karan or garantita) — a baked chickpea-flour flan of Spanish-Andalusian origin sold as a street snack in the north. Café terraces along the boulevards and above the port add sea views to the coffee, with the Strait of Gibraltar and, on clear days, the Spanish coast across the water.

To breakfast well in Tangier, choose a historic café around the Petit or Grand Socco for atmosphere, mix the Moroccan spread with a Spanish pastry or churros, and take a terrace with a sea view if you can. Mint tea and strong milky coffee are the constants that tie the two worlds together.