Restaurant Al Madina — Restaurant in arrondissement de Tanger-Medina طنجة المدينة

It started with my mate blindly walking in without consulting the group and not asking for a menu or prices. It only went down hill from there. Some other unfortunate tourists in the restaurant wished us good luck when they left shortly after our entry.

Our server who spoke reasonably good English when we arrived did the usual Moroccan tactic of trying to order for you and kindly suggested 4 Tajines for the table, we settled on 2 for us as a group of 4 to share. All was confirmed and went back to pleasantries.

Our first issue was the large bottle of water we ordered came and had clearly already been opened and refilled from the tap, when we brought this to their attention it was changed quickly without argument, something I was not familiar with in most of my dealings with people on the trip so far.

The food arrived, it wasn't especially hot and the clay dish tajines are normally served in was cold, a sign it hadn't been cooked in it. The food itself wasn't terrible, but it was by far the worst tajine we had had on the trip.

Then the drama. The bill came. We were charged (over charged too, the most expensive tajines on the trip) for 4 Tajines. The argument started when we challenged it with the first excuse being that we ordered 2 tajines at 2 people sharing size. We were then very theatrically shown the different sized clay dishes. We were not shown this before our order when we very clearly asked for 2.

This went on for a while, with us being pretty stubborn in our need to have a win over the hustle game. It was when he proclaimed to not speak English that we knew we were going to have our win.

I like to believe it was an honest misunderstanding when we ordered, but the game was strong in that place, he knew we knew he was on the hustle.

The 1 star I gave was because I left feeling like we had somewhat had a...

The grovelling service at Morocco's most depressing restaurant was only the fifteenth time that day someone had tried to hustle me for money. Eventually I relent without thinking or asking my three friends for their opinion and began my journey at restaurant Al Madina.

We enter the restaurant, sit down, order our drinks, two tagines to share and a bottle of water to the table. Two Americans greet us as they are leaving, laughing and saying 'good luck, it's a circus'.

Our water comes back, it's not sealed - tap water. When we send it back there isn't a sense of surprise, just 'damn, they found it again, gimme a real one' in Arabic to the kitchen.

The boss walks in. He immediately looks at the bottle of water on the table and glares at the waiter. 'Why did you give these idiots real water, they are just tourists, it's not like they'll be back', he says.

Dinner arrives. We cautiously begin to dish out our meal being aware how hot the pots get. But it's cold. The food has been cooked sometime the week before and is just about warm enough to be edible.

We ask for the bill and prepare to pay up and leave. The bill has twice the number of mains we ordered. We query this, we ate two tagines after all.

But no. Four people ate tagines. Thus we pay for four tagines. But two were ordered. But we gave you four in two pots. But we ordered two.

10 minutes passes and eventually we re-engage him in conversation and it slowly dawns that we are not falling for it and won't be backing down.

He corrects the bill, we leave victorious.

Until 30 minutes later when the cycle...

Everyone at my table left this restaurant feeling cheated. We foolishly said yes to a man on the street trying to convince us to eat here. Rather than show us a menu he listed a few things that they had and said he'd order 4 tagines (one each) for the table.

We told him that we weren't that hungry and two would be fine which he clearly acknowledged and accepted our order of 2 tagines to share and a bottle of water.

First thing we noticed when our water arrived was that the seal was broken. When we asked about this he didn't even try to convince us that he opened it for us and went to replace it for one that wasn't tap water .

When our tagines arrived they were luke warm seemed like leftovers.

When the bill arrived we noticed they'd charged us for 4 tagines. We asked about this and the waiter played dumb and told us that there were two servings in each of the two tagines we shared. When we told him that he made a mistake suddenly his English got worse and he played dumb. We then had to stand our ground and make it clear that we're not going to let him cheat us before he corrected the bill.

I've never written a review before and our experience was bad enough to write this....