Street Food

A wandering subculture of itinerant street sellers provides needed services and local colour in the streets of major Moroccan cities. A host of shoe-shine boys and sellers of rugs, djellabahs and Berber knives roam the streets in search of sales, as does the lemon-wood man with his bicycle strung with dozens of wooden spoons and whisks and stirrers of all kinds, fashioned from the wood of lemon trees, and a selection of outlandish straw hats. Another street specialist sells tall jars of mountain honey. But it is the ambulant hard-boiled egg vendors and the hot chick pea or broad (fava) bean merchants that interest me the most. From the former, a shelled hard-boiled egg with a small paper square with salt and cumin powder to dip your shelled egg in; from the latter, a heaped mound of steaming hot chick peas or broad (fava) beans served with a liberal dusting of coarse salt and powdered cumin. Each for only a dirham or less than 7 pence (about 4 cents): wonderful provender – with a drink or a glass of mint tea – for literally pennies.