La Maison Arabe

La Maison Arabe in Marrakech is one of the city's most storied dining institutions, opening as a restaurant in 1946 when the Pasha of Marrakech granted two French women the right to serve Moroccan cuisine to foreigners — providing them with one of his own palace dadas to teach them the craft. Today, Le Restaurant at this five-star riad-hotel in the Bab Doukkala medina serves refined classic Moroccan dishes beneath a hand-painted zouaké ceiling, amid antique palace doors, Italian lanterns and the sound of live Arab-Andalusian oud music. Signature dishes praised by Frommer's, Lonely Planet and TasteAtlas include lamb tagine with caramelised oranges, melt-in-your-mouth pastilla and light, fragrant couscous. The property also runs one of Marrakech's most celebrated cooking schools, open to non-guests, where a traditional dada leads half-day workshops revealing the secrets of Moroccan spice-craft.