Somehow, Tanger reminded me of Athens. It is called the white city due to its white Medina and buildings; it is by the sea and hilly. Indeed, some things in common.
The Marché Central de Poissons, the fish market hall with its meat section, has the same appearance of raw produce as the central market in Athens, which I blogged about. It’s just smaller and not designed with an outer ring for butchers and an inner ring for fish and seafood. The sections were just next to each other, still as clearly defined as in Athens: one section for fish, one for meat, and one for other produce like olives.
Meat section
The butcher does the cuts on site; there are apparently no ready-made pieces delivered to the market. The view brings the basics of butchering in front of the clientele. It is raw, it is uncensored, it is real. Meat here is not as abstract as in the packages one buys at the supermarket, where everything is so clean that it is hard to imagine the piece of meat you eat was once an animal that was killed.
To my surprise, I saw more beef than sheep meat. I expected the opposite, as my memories of Morocco have always focused on the great-tasting sheep meat. Well, the Marché de Poissons visit is probably not empiric enough.
One of my favorite pieces of an animal has long been the offals. I like their deep, amber taste, which always provides warmth to the body. The butchers were not short of selling them. They hung like curtains on hooks and had at times almost the same look as an abstract painting. I have to add that my passion for offals is larger than my expertise in arts.
Fish section
he focus of the Marché de Poissons is fish; for a city that is at the divide of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, it should not come as a surprise. Even though, I have to say that it was not so easy to find fish in restaurants.
I am not good at distinguishing the different fishes, so I cannot tell what I saw. Certainly, they did not look like freshwater fishes. Some of them had rather frightening appearances, some looked almost funny in their posing appearances, and others were quite colorful.
Shrimps were one thing I expected to see, and they were there in noticeable quantities. Other shellfish were not to be seen, such as lobsters or similar types. I saw fish eggs at more than one stall, but I never noticed that they are used in Moroccan cuisine. I have to dig deeper into this.
What else?
As it was a rather short visit to the market hall, I do not remember everything else sold at the Marché Central de Poissons. But the olives looked really nice! The spices were presented beautifully, as I remembered from my visit to Marrakesh some years ago.
All in all
The Marché Central de Poissons in Tanger is a great way to discover fish and meat as part of Moroccan cuisine. Vendors are gentle; no one refused a picture of the produce to be taken. It is worth a visit while in Tanger.
A little link list
- The Marché de Poissons on Facebook
- The post on the market hall in Athens which has something in common with this market hall
- My other posts on Moroccan markets