The new type of must-do meal on trips don’t involve a restaurant

Omar lifts the lid of the tagine with a flourish to reveal a sizzling dish of beef and caramelised prunes. There’s a chorus of admiration from the guests around the table, and he flushes with pride.

“This is my wife’s special dish,” he says. “We love this meal. It is very good food. Now, eat. Eat!”

This evening, in Morocco’s famed “blue city” of Chefchaouen, I’ve booked dinner at a local’s home as an optional extra on an Inspiring Vacations tour of the country. Our host is Omar, the father of two girls, aged six and four, and his wife Nabila. Omar and Nabila are both in their early 30s.

This type of home-style meal offering on tours is becoming hugely popular with Australian travellers, and is something that nearly all companies now include on itineraries. And it’s no surprise why.

Feasting on authentic local dishes in someone’s home feels, for visitors, like a very special taste of, and glimpse into, the lives of those whose country they’re visiting. It can provide a connection with locals that feels so much more meaningful and tangible and adds a whole new dimension to the travel experience.

There’s the food, sure enough, yet it’s also a chance to see inside their homes and meet a family on their terms and hear, first hand, what their lives are like.

In this case, my hosts live in this beautiful city in the Rif Mountains of north-west Morocco in a small, squat apartment block off the main drag, that looks dispiritingly unprepossessing on the outside. But inside, we’re led into the “best room” and it’s a veritable wonderland of gilt, chandeliers, glitter-painted walls and large plush sofas decorated with golden-edged cushions.

As we’re seated at the table, Omar joins us, while Nabila labours in the kitchen (some things are the same the world over). His two children shyly peep in and then, as they grow bolder, join us for clapping games and touch our hair curiously.

When the food is served, it’s another surprise. We start with locally grown fresh dates, fleshy olives dressed in chilli and lemon, and soft mounds of goat’s cheese made just up the street and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and home-made fig jam. It’s all accompanied by thick wedges of home-made bread, still warm from the oven.

The next course enters the room in a silver tureen – a tasty vegetable soup – while the next is the masterstroke, the traditional beef tagine. For me, someone who doesn’t eat meat (hosts are primed by tour companies to make sure everyone’s catered for) there’s a goat’s cheese omelette.

The dessert is stunning – a silver platter of bananas and fresh mandarins from the trees of Chefchaouen, all carefully arranged around the star of the dish: the biggest pomegranate any of us have ever seen. It makes the fruit we see in Australia look tiny. It’s also the juiciest, sweetest pomegranate I’ve ever tasted. Our host cracks it open and offers us a sizeable wedge each that we eat messily with our hands.

But then there’s still more. The final course, after we’ve cleaned up with paper towels, is a plate of sweet desserts, with soft almond meal biscuits around a date, baklava-like crumbly pastries and rose-scented caramels.

In between courses, we chat about Omar and Nabila’s lives, and he asks us questions about ours. A security guard at a local hotel, he works nights so he can take his young daughters to school every morning and walk them back again every afternoon; his wife is a chef at a restaurant nearby.

Like any young couple the world over, they have to juggle the care of their children with the demands of work, and that’s made easier with his mother-in-law staying with them too. But it can be tough.

It’s often hard for Omar to sleep during the day with all the noise outside on the street or his daughters on school holidays, and during his long nights of work, he often tries to steal a nap when everything’s quiet. Too often, however, he’s woken by a jet-lagged tourist at 3am asking for the password for the Wi-Fi. (Note to self: never wait until 3am to ask such a question.)

He’s from Chefchaouen and would never dream of leaving, as he loves the town, his neighbours and friends, but there are always challenges. The local hospital, for instance, only has one doctor and it can take up to six months for a regular healthcare appointment which is particularly tricky for aged relatives.

As we talk, I marvel at these programs which allow us to break bread with locals on their home turf. Some of the encounters are simple, like this one, while others are more elaborate.

In the Cook Islands, I went on a progressive dinner at three sets of locals’ homes, grazing on a huge array of salads at the first, meat and fish dishes with taro and breadfruit at the second, and sweets and desserts at the third. Everyone was eager to chat, in between songs on the ukulele and guitar.

In Cuba, a home meal turned into a massive feast, to which the host had also invited several members of his family, accompanied by live music and dancing after we’d finished eating. The food wasn’t really up to much, but the friendliness, singing and dancing made it an evening to be treasured.

An afternoon tea with hosts in Scotland was just as surprising and, with a table laden with speciality cakes, Tunnock’s caramel wafers, local biscuits and Scottish chocolates, the sugar buzz stayed with me for days.

I know some travellers resile from eating in strangers’ homes, worrying about hygiene, how the food will be, and the intimacy of the experience. But Inspiring Vacations certainly chooses the hosts carefully, as do other reputable tour organisers, vet the experience beforehand thoroughly, and makes quite sure everyone’s expectations will be met.

And if these locals are willing to open up to us and have foreigners trudge through their lives and their personal spaces – and too often be judged into the bargain – then surely the least we can do is embrace the opportunity wholeheartedly?

Take Omar and Nabila, for example. It seems it was a treasured chance for them to show off their food and culture, and to swap stories with people they usually only experience at a distance. Intensely proud of their country and everything it has given them, they adore having this opportunity.

Even though we saw little of Nabila, it turns out she speaks little English so was too embarrassed to spend more time with us. But she joins us at the end of the meal and is thrilled by all the clean plates we’ve left, and our praise for her food.

“We are honoured that you have come to our home,” Omar tells us, as his daughters gambol gleefully around us. “We hope you are liking Morocco and Chefchaouen, and you will be back one day. We look forward to seeing you again.”

We certainly do, too.

THE DETAILS

FLY
Emirates has daily flights from Sydney and Melbourne to Casablanca via Dubai. See emirates.com

TOUR
Inspiring Vacations’ 15-day Magical Morocco Premium Small Group Tour is an escorted tour with an English-speaking guide and a number of local experts along the way. Travelling from Casablanca via Rabat, Chefchaouen, Volubilis, the Sahara Desert and Marrakesh to Essaouira, it includes 13 nights in four-star hotels and boutique riad accommodation, breakfasts, six dinners and three lunches. From $3695 a person, land only. Flights extra.

MORE
inspiringvacations.com; visitmorocco.com

The writer was a guest of Inspiring Vacations.