El Badia at Beldi Country Club

El Badia is the poolside restaurant at Beldi Country Club, a fourteen-hectare estate built like a traditional Moroccan village on the Route du Barrage, about ten minutes south of central Marrakech. The property began as an olive grove; its founder kept the century-old trees and layered the rest around them: twelve thousand rose bushes, an organic vegetable garden, water lily ponds, cactus beds, bamboo alleys, and citrus groves, all tended by a team of eighteen gardeners year-round. The restaurant sits beside two thirty-five-metre swimming pools shaded by olive branches. From the table, the view moves across the rose garden toward the Atlas Mountains. The menu follows the seasons and the estate's own harvest: Moroccan and Mediterranean dishes built around whatever the organic garden and the day's market deliver. In winter, the dining room migrates to a greenhouse surrounded by fruit trees and vegetable beds, with the mountains still in frame. A day pass gives non-guests access to the pools, sun beds, and a set lunch. Beldi means "traditional" in Arabic, and the word runs through the property like a thread. The on-site souk houses workshops where craftsmen blow glass by mouth using a nearly vanished technique, throw pottery, and weave textiles. The hotel rooms are scattered through narrow alleys and shaded courtyards in adobe and riad style. Two bars serve cocktails to the sound of jazz beside fireplaces or among the garden paths. For dinner, separate restaurants operate in the gardens and greenhouse with distinct Moroccan and Mediterranean menus. The setting is the real argument. Beldi Country Club functions as a botanical escape within easy reach of the medina, and El Badia is where most visitors spend the core of their day: eating, swimming, and drifting through gardens that feel genuinely wild despite careful cultivation.