Best Cafés in Marrakech — Coffee, Mint Tea and People-Watching

The traditional Marrakech café is a Gueliz pavement institution: rows of chairs facing the street, men (mostly) reading papers, and waiters ferrying tiny glasses of coffee and mint tea. The coffee vocabulary is worth learning — qahwa kahla (black), nous-nous (half coffee, half milk, the local favourite), and a café cassé (espresso with a splash of milk). These places are for sitting, watching the boulevard and letting an hour pass.

Inside the medina, a newer wave of cafés occupies restored riads and rooftops, serving specialty coffee, fresh juices, salads and cakes in tiled courtyards heavy with plants. The lanes around the spice square and Rue Mouassine are dotted with them, and they double as cool, calm refuges from the heat and hustle of the souks — a place to recharge, use the wifi and eat something light.

For the most Moroccan experience, order mint tea (atay) rather than coffee. Made with gunpowder green tea, a fistful of fresh spearmint and plenty of sugar, poured from height into small glasses, it is the national drink and the ritual around which social life turns. Many cafés serve it in a small teapot so you can pour your own refills.

Cafés are also the everyday stage for people-watching and slow travel. Pick a terrace, order a nous-nous or a pot of tea, and you have bought yourself a front-row seat to the city for the price of a single drink — no one will rush you to leave.