Best Karan in Oujda — The East's Favourite Street Snack

Karan (also called garantita, a name shared with neighbouring Algeria) is a baked savoury flan made from chickpea flour, water, oil and spices, cooked until it sets into a soft, custardy slab with a golden top. Sliced warm and eaten plain, dusted with cumin, or tucked into bread with harissa, it is the beloved cheap street snack of Morocco's east, and nowhere is it more central than in Oujda. Its origins reflect the shared culinary culture of the Morocco-Algeria borderlands, where chickpea flan is a staple street food on both sides.

In Oujda, karan is sold from dedicated stalls and carts, especially around the Bab Sidi Abdelwahab food market and throughout the medina and city centre. A slice costs just a few dirhams and makes a filling snack or light meal; in a sandwich with harissa and cumin it becomes a cheap lunch. The best karan has a smooth, moist interior and a well-browned top, and is served warm from the oven — freshness is everything, so busy stalls with high turnover are the ones to seek out.

Karan sits alongside the wider eastern-Moroccan street-food culture of spicy grills, soups and snails, but it is the dish most associated with the region and with Oujda in particular. For visitors, it is a distinctive taste of the east rarely found in the same form in the tourist cities of the west and centre, and a window into the cross-border food culture of the Oriental region.

Seek out a busy karan stall around Bab Sidi Abdelwahab or in the medina, try it both plain with cumin and in bread with harissa, and enjoy it warm. Cheap, comforting and quintessentially eastern, karan is Oujda's signature street food and a must-try in Morocco's far east.