Halal food in Morocco, Spain and Bosnia: what changes at the border

People assume halal food is hard in Southern Europe and easy in the Muslim world. In practice Morocco, Spain and Bosnia are all straightforward, but for different reasons and with different traps. Knowing which trap is which saves a lot of standing around on pavements at nine at night.

Morocco: easy, but ask about the wine list

Slaughter practices are halal by default and pork is rare in traditional cooking. The food is the least of your problems here.

The catch is alcohol: tourist-facing restaurants in Marrakech and Casablanca often serve wine, and the kitchen may use it in cooking. We use Muslim-owned or certified places, and we check rather than assume.

Eat: slow-cooked tagines, mechoui, harira, msemen, and the orange-juice carts in the Jemaa el-Fnaa. Skip: anything that describes itself as 'French-Moroccan fusion' without saying where the meat came from.

Spain: Al-Andalus is back on the menu

This is the one people worry about, unnecessarily. Halal butchers are common in Madrid, Barcelona, Granada and Córdoba; Granada has a visibly Muslim quarter with halal restaurants and tea houses, and Córdoba's Mezquita area is the same.

Morocco, Spain and Bosnia are all easy for halal food, for three completely different reasons.

The trap is the default: jamón is everywhere and 'sin cerdo' (without pork) is a phrase worth learning. Ask specifically rather than assuming a dish is fine because it is vegetarian-adjacent.

Eat: halal tapas in Granada, cordoban salmorejo, Moroccan-influenced pastries in Andalusia, and the tea houses of the Albaicín.

Bosnia: the country just eats this way

Bosnia is the easiest of the three and the one nobody expects. Halal is simply how much of the country eats; ćevapi, burek and begova čorba are standard, and Muslim-owned restaurants are not a special category.

The trap here is the opposite: assuming the alcohol rules are the same. Sarajevo has a café culture that includes alcohol, so we pick places that do not.

Eat: ćevapi in Baščaršija, burek for breakfast, Bosnian coffee served with a sugar cube, and the cream cake that Sarajevo argues about.