Fast food has its time and place – and when you’re down to your final hundred Moroccan Dirhams on your last day in Marrakech and need one more meal, you really can’t beat cheap fast food for its price and convenience! There’s no need to go in search of another ATM to withdraw more money for yet another chicken tajine dinner when 100 Dirhams ($13.80 AUD) can get you an incredibly filling meal for two people at Roti D’Or off the main square.
It is absolutely nothing to look at from the outside – a small little cafe with outdoor seating on a side street off the main square. Somehow though, it is consistently rated in the top five restaurants in Marrakech on TripAdvisor, usually only beat out by much more expensive and fancier restaurants located in five star hotels.
The menu is uncomplicated and consists of either burgers with fries, or fried meat served with rice, flatbread and salad. We started with the Falafel served with the aforementioned sides – I didn’t even bother touching the flatbread, but did gobble up the delicious herbed rice with the falafel. I thought the falafel was a bit over-fried actually – definitely not a patch on the amazing falafel we had in Ohrid in Macedonia.
We went on to order the Crunchy Chicken, which I had hoped would be deep-fried chicken drumsticks or wings. It turns out that you’ll need to go to KFC for those though – Roti D’Or’s crunchy chicken is essentially just processed chicken fillets like frozen Birds Eye chicken strips. This is the type of dish you won’t need to bribe a young child to eat – and indeed, there was an English family sitting next to us where both of the young children were munching away on these chicken strips!
We finished off our meal by sharing the Tex Mex Burger, which was very interestingly if impractically presented with the burger bun skewered upright on the top of the burger. This is no Roslund Finnish burger unfortunately, and barely rates against a Burger King offering. At least it comes with a side of crunchy French fries.
As a general ordering guide – one meal per person is more than sufficient. We definitely over-ordered as evidenced by the fact that we left all the flatbread and most of the rice on the plate – I also ended up leaving most of the bun from my half of the burger as there was simply too much food!
I’m surprised that Roti D’Or is rated as highly as it is as it certainly doesn’t offer a particularly noteworthy menu or amazingly unique food. What it does offer is an incredibly cheap menu which barely challenges the budget, so I suspect that its many highly positive reviews are based on price rather than quality. Come here if you’re down to your last hundred Dirhams, but don’t go out of your way to visit!
Roti D’Or is located at 17 Rue Kennaria in Marrakech, Morocco.