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The first 50 minutes were not bad, but still very slow paced - not many stops, and not much. After the break, we took a few steps into St Marks and stood for an hour while he lectured. It was so loud and we could barely hear him, but even if we could, we expect more walking on a walking tour. We wanted to see lots of side streets and fun back alleys but instead we basically walked to the big square and got a lecture in the loudest and most crowded part of the city.
Jalil is a friendly guide, but the tour itself was disappointing. My first booking was cancelled by him with 2 hours notice (I booked it a month in advance) and rescheduled for the next day. I had to make a lot of changes to my plans and other bookings to accommodate him, but I was very excited for the food tour so I made it work. The tour itself involved a lot of pointless walking - I expected to walk between interesting and special places, but really we just traversed the medina to visit two very average cafes/restaurants, and a touristic spice shop. You would get the same experience randomly picking cafes and shops to visit (we ate at much better and more interesting places ourselves in the trip). Jalil is good company, so if you think of it as dinner with a local then maybe it is fine, but this is not a food tour that a seasoned traveler would expect. The tour promised to show us how locals "shop, prepare their food and eat", and on that measure I don't feel it delivered. We learned nothing about shopping, and only a little about food preparation and eating. The first stop, for tea and biscuits, cost a very reasonable 10 dirhams. It was nice, but nothing special - you'll have mint tea everywhere in Morocco, you don't need to walk 20 minutes on a tour to get it at this specific cafe. At the second stop he ordered a variety of standard dishes for us to all share (pastilla, tagine, tangia, couscous), at a cost of 100 dirhams each. I suppose this is average for a touristic restaurant, but the quality was average so overall it was a bit of a let down. I've had better meals for 80 dirhams and worse meals for 200, so it's average. More importantly, from a holistic perspective it just didn't feel like a food tour. We weren't being taken to special places or given special foods, sampling from all over the medina: it just felt like dinner at a restaurant he picked out for no particular reason, at least no reason that was for the benefit of our experience. So it was okay, I enjoyed the conversation with Jalil, but he was on his phone a fair bit throughout the evening, but when he wasn't I thought he was good company and enjoyed the conversation.
The tour was pretty good. She did great as a guide and was very personable, but I would have liked less of a sales-oriented approach. There’s a weird dynamic between her and the men who run the shops, and I’m not sure if that’s a result of her wanting commissions or ingrained cultural sexism. You definitely feel the sales pitch the whole way through, a little like a timeshare presentation, but she does a good job taking you through the Medina. The workshops she takes you to are interesting, though I am not informed enough to judge whether they are truly the best in the city or offer good value for money. Nevertheless, I’d recommend her tour - but go in with a little skepticism and caution.
Had a great time and learned alot!