Tamimt - Oberoi

Tamimt means "delight" in Berber, and the name earns its keep. Set inside The Oberoi on the Route d'Ouarzazate, the restaurant is the hotel's all-day dining room, serving breakfast through dinner across a menu that moves between Morocco, the Mediterranean, and India without losing its footing. Moroccan salads, lamb couscous, a veal and prune tagine, and wood-grilled poussin sit alongside Indian thali platters, chicken tikka, and black daal sourced from the Oberoi group's deep subcontinental roots. The kitchen draws on the hotel's own organic garden for herbs and seasonal produce, and the show kitchen gives indoor diners a front-row view of it all being assembled. The room itself is fresco-lined and chandelier-lit, with the proportions of a place built to impress. But the better seat is outside, on the terrace where the Oberoi's grand canal stretches toward the Atlas Mountains, flanked by cypress trees and centuries-old olive groves that once made this land a working farm. The light at breakfast is gentle; by dinner, the mountains turn violet and the canal catches the last warmth of the sky. What separates Tamimt from a standard hotel restaurant is range and execution. The Indian side of the menu, in particular, punches with a conviction you would not expect this far from the subcontinent, and the Moroccan dishes hold their own against dedicated restaurants in the medina. A lounge attached to the dining room handles aperitifs and nightcaps, making the transition from table to armchair almost seamless. In twenty-eight acres of gardens with the Atlas behind them, there are worse places to take your time.