9 Best Restaurants in The Southern Atlantic Coast, Morocco

Set among gorgeous gardens and featuring a menu of local produce, Dar Zitoune is worth the visit from Taroudant. Serving a refined Mediterranean-style menu, it's a favorite with locals as well as with passing tour groups. Sit outside under citrus trees or inside in the large dining room and make the most of the opportunity to eat steak tartare or a Roquefort cheese–and-endive salad. The staff is courteous and speaks English well.  Reserve in advance, especially for special dishes such as couscous, mechoui (spit-roast lamb), or pastilla.

A few miles outside town on the edge of thuya and olive groves, owner Abderrazak welcomes you warmly to his artisanal cheesery and open-air restaurant. Enjoy a fixed-menu lunch of salads topped with local goat- and sheep-milk cheeses, followed by (for nonvegetarians) a mechoui (lamb spit roast), and wine to complement. You'll find it hard to move after the feast.

Small but buzzy, this cash-only salad-and-crepe bar offers great-value healthy snacks and small meals, including DIY salads, quiches, and panini. It attracts local office workers, foreign residents, and tourists for its healthy food, excellent Italian espresso, and fresh juices and smoothies. Take a form and pen and design your own salad, picking the size, base, ingredients, and dressing to suit. It's often packed by midday, but service is fast.

This chic eatery, formerly Le P'tit Dôme (and still sometimes referred to as such), offers an impressive menu of Moroccan specialties and local seafood, with a large Moroccan and French wine list—champagne included—to boot. Sit on the terrace or in the black-and-white dining room. All bread is freshly baked on the premises.

Taroudant's oldest family-run riad prides itself on its restaurant for good reason. While Habib greets the guests, his wife, Latifa, works wonders in the kitchen to produce a spread of salads, pastilla, tagines, or couscous fit for a king, not to mention the best pastilla du lait (a dessert of fine, crispy phyllo pastry layered with pastry crème) in town. Book in advance for lunch or dinner.

A long-standing favorite among locals, expats, and tourists, this authentic Italian restaurant serves the best crispy pizzas in the medina, straight from a wood-fired oven. The menu also features home-cooked pasta dishes. Diners eat in an eclectically decorated dining room or upstairs on the enclosed terrace. Wines and other alcoholic drinks are available.

This restaurant and bar with a Mediterranean menu is the place to be in the evenings. It's named after the wind that blows off the sea, which you can feel firsthand if you're having cocktails on the terrific rooftop terrace with views of the port. The menu includes seafood (try the Oualidia oysters when in season), hamburger, and roasted Camembert. At night a band or DJ plays on the roof to a hip crowd. On chillier evenings on the terrace, ask the staff for a poncho.

Tucked away along the skala, this chic restaurant is a real treat, offering a daily changing menu—prepared in an open kitchen—that blends seasonal and local ingredients with French savoir faire. The airy restaurant draws in a clientele of expats and tourists with its muted dove grays, glossy white furniture, and quirky art touches, such as a gorgeous Gnaoua mural. Be sure to try the goat cheese from a women's co-op in nearby Meskala; you also can't miss the chocolate fondant with salted caramel ice cream.