Moroccan food and its surge in popularity is profiled

THE cookbook author Paula Wolfert paced around a demonstration kitchen in Marrakesh's ritzy Es Saadi hotel, fielding questions from a group of American tourists on a subject dear to her heart: cooked granules of semolina, better known as couscous.

Some questions were historical: How old is couscous? (“Semolina in North Africa dates to the 12th century.”) Others were practical: Can you make couscous in a rice cooker? (Yes, but a clay vessel works better.) The group, which included restaurateurs and food writers, scribbled notes attentively.

“Moroccan cuisine is very hot in America these days,” said Ms. Wolfert, whose pioneering 1973 cookbook, “Couscous and Other Good Food From Morocco,” won last year's Cookbook Hall of Fame Award from the James Beard Foundation. “It's an exciting time to eat in Marrakesh.”

As the fascination with Moroccan cuisine has taken off — both in the United States and around the globe — epicures and chowhounds are flocking to the ancient ochre-hued city of Marrakesh. Foreign-led food tours are sprouting. Homegrown cooking classes are multiplying. And high-end restaurants run by European hotshots are opening alongside the city's nonpareil street food and old, home-style establishments.

The excitement begins in Djemaa el Fna, the teeming central square, which offers an immersion in the city's myriad eats. As the dusk call to prayer fades from the tall minaret of the 12th-century Koutoubia Mosque, hundreds of men and boys in soiled chefs' whites erect makeshift food stalls to feed Marrakesh's 1,001 appetites. They fire up grills and reach into steaming cauldrons to serve up bean soups, deep-fried sole, grilled eggplant strips, tripe stew, hard-boiled-egg sandwiches and skewered meats.

Each stand is numbered with a tall, handwritten sign, and putting together a meal in Djemaa el Fna is like cracking a safe: it's a matter of finding the right combination.

Start at No. 6, where Ahmed ladles bowls of escargot (10 dirhams, or $1.22 at 8.2 dirhams to the dollar), before advancing to No. 32, where Hassan and his team grill mounds of tiny beef sausages served with mild red tomato chutney (12 dirhams). The payoff is at No. 10, where Mustafa slices off tender strips of slow-cooked lamb that you eat with a dash of ground cumin and warm disk of bread (25 dirhams). Sweet mint tea balances the flavor of the savory meat.

But for the most refined take on traditional cooking, follow the ladies. Led by the chef Halima Chab and her all-female staff, the restaurant Al Fassia (55 Boulevard Zerktouni, Gueliz; 212-24-43-40-60; www.alfassia.com) specializes in the striking mixtures of meats and sweets that characterize the best Moroccan food.

Exhibit A: Pastilla. To most city dwellers, the pigeon is an ignoble nuisance, a rat of the sky, a menace to statues. But at Al Fassia, the lowly bird is cooked, diced and deployed in a perfectly flaky pastry along with finely chopped pistachios and almonds. Topped with a dusting of cinnamon and powdered sugar, the concoction becomes remarkably delicious. And followed with a tagine of chicken and caramelized pumpkin, the meal is a study in savory-sweet sublimity.

Cooking in Marrakesh is also getting increasingly haute, thanks to a growing number of top French chefs. Christophe Leroy, the toast of St.-Tropez, is now running La Table du Marché, a sleek French nouveau restaurant at the luxurious Hivernage Hotel (Rue des Temples, Gueliz; 212-24-42-41-00; www.christophe-leroy.com). And Fabrice Vulin, after earning Michelin stars in France and Switzerland, is making a new name for himself at Dar Ennassim (Le Pavillon du Golf, Circuit de la Palmeraie; 212-24-33-43-08; www.pavillonfabricevulin.com), a high-design villa in the fashionable Palmeraie district.

“The quality of produce here is amazing,” said Hadrien Villedieu, a veteran of the Michelin-starred Atelier de Joël Robuchon in Paris. Only 26 years old, he's now running the chic white restaurant of Le Bab (Rue Mohamed el Beqqual; 212-24-43-52-50; www.babhotelmarrakech.com), a new boutique hotel. “And I'm often astonished to find fish that are better than in France,” he said, “and the same for the meats.”

Besides sampling these new flavors, amateur chefs can experiment with their own. Cooking schools have sprung up everywhere in recent years, from old-school restaurants like Maison Arabe (www.lamaisonarabe.com), to fancy hotels like Kasbah Agafay (www.kasbahagafay.com). Learning to cook a couscous merguez now ranks with carpet haggling as a must-do Marrakesh activity.

Among the first to offer Marrakesh cooking classes to foreigners was the Rhode School of Cuisine (www.rhodeschoolofcuisine.com). Today, the England-based company offers a dozen one-week Marrakesh cooking classes. Recent students included Rick Browne, the cookbook author and host of the PBS show “Barbecue America,” who spent a week at the luxury villa Dar Liqama, shooting a special segment on Moroccan grilling techniques.

In and around the teeming Rue Mouassine, in the old Medina, you can forage for conical tagine pots and bottles of rare argan oil, made from the pit of a fruit unique to the country. And then there are the spices.