A Piece of Japan in Marrakech: IKI in Sidi Ghanem

In Sidi Ghanem, Japan begins behind a white curtain. Outside are warehouses, furniture showrooms and design studios; inside, a handcrafted wooden counter places Shoki Yokoyama at the centre of the room. He works on the other side in a white jacket and cap, a chopping board in front of him and little else, while sushi arrives one piece at a time. It is hard to imagine a less obvious address for the restaurant Yokoyama had in mind.

Osaka, Fès, Marrakech

Yokoyama is from Osaka and travelled through more than 30 countries before settling in Morocco. In 2021, he opened IKI in Fès with a clear idea: to cook Japanese food without adapting it more than necessary to international tastes. The emphasis is on traditional techniques, precise preparation, carefully chosen ingredients and that particular quality Japanese cooking has of appearing simple precisely when it is not, far from the heavily modified fusion often served outside Japan.

Fès is where IKI found its identity, but over time it also became a constraint. Visibility was limited, logistics could be inconsistent, and some of the specialist ingredients a sushi counter depends on were difficult to source reliably. Marrakech offered a different scale: better connections, an international clientele, a developed hospitality scene and, above all, an environment in which a restaurant like this could reach more people without changing what it wanted to be. In March 2026 IKI moved cities. The address changed, the idea did not: it opened at 308 Rue Sidi Ghanem on the 21st.

Before the restaurant, there was already IKI

Marrakech had, in fact, encountered Yokoyama before 2026. Before there was a dining room to book, IKI had already been cooking its way around Morocco: at private dinners and receptions, an event organised by the Embassy of Japan, large-scale catering and evenings hosted in different cities across the country. For a while, IKI existed without a permanent restaurant at all, and Yokoyama arrived in Sidi Ghanem with a defined style of cooking and an audience that, at least in part, already knew it.

What had been missing was a room built around that cooking, and in Sidi Ghanem it starts at the counter.

A seat at the counter

The centre of the dining room is not a table but the counter: handmade in wood, with nine seats facing the chef’s station. A lacquer tray, chopsticks and a folded napkin are set at each place; behind Yokoyama, a short off-white curtain separates the kitchen from the room.

From the counter you see almost everything: fish sliced in front of you, rice passing from the chef’s hands to the plate, each course set down the moment it is ready.

High walls, pale wood, translucent panels that soften the light and dark-veined stone underfoot make up the rest of the room. To one side is a private tatami room, which can be booked for a group, with a low table and floor cushions printed with waves; a paper lantern hangs from the wooden ceiling, and a kimono is framed on the wall above a run of shelves. Japanese tableware, calligraphy and selected artworks complete the room.

The character above the door

Above the entrance is a single character: 粋. It is read iki, and it names a refinement that has no need to announce itself, more interested in what can be removed than added: an aesthetic of elegance, simplicity and thoughtful hospitality. The word comes from the urban culture of Edo-period Japan and has no neat English equivalent.

Marrakech’s craftsmanship tends to express itself through material and ornament: zellige, carved plaster and cedar, worked doors and courtyards that reveal themselves behind anonymous walls. IKI’s entrance is a cotton curtain, a wooden frame and an ochre wall, yet both traditions depend on the work of someone’s hands and on attention to details a guest may never consciously register. On the counter inside, that attention has a shape: a folded napkin marked with the same character, set on a red lacquer tray.

Lunch without ceremony

At lunch, from 12:30 to 14:30, IKI serves what Japan eats at midday: a set. A main dish of your choice, chirashi sushi, tempura don or chicken karaage don with a soft onsen egg, comes with a small appetiser, miso soup, dessert and Japanese tea, and on Saturdays there is una-jyu, eel over rice, in a handful of servings. It is the version of IKI you can drop into without turning the meal into an occasion. Omakase nigiri are served at lunch too, by three or five pieces, and the tempura arrives in blue-and-white porcelain, its lid resting to one side.

At dinner, à la carte or omakase

Dinner is different: in the evening the menu turns à la carte, with sashimi and nigiri by the piece, maki, hot and cold appetisers, from homemade tofu to oysters with ikura and ponzu. The full omakase is the other way to eat here: eleven courses, from appetiser and sashimi through grilled and fried dishes, nigiri and maki to miso soup, Japanese omelette and dessert, shaped by Yokoyama around what is in season. It has to be booked at least six hours ahead.

The menu asks one thing at the counter: each piece is served at its peak and meant to be eaten as soon as it is set down, with hands or chopsticks, both equally traditional, and a slice of pickled ginger in between to reset the palate. If you can, book a seat at the counter.

Hospitality before service

Yokoyama’s cooking sits at the heart of IKI, but the Marrakech restaurant brings together several different kinds of expertise. Amine El Baroudi contributes his knowledge of the Moroccan business landscape and a connection to Japan that includes importing Japanese tea; Plan・Do・See Africa and Kenji Hosokawa bring the hospitality, concept and operational side of the project.

The word they return to is omotenashi. It is often translated simply as Japanese hospitality, although the idea is more specific: paying enough attention to a guest to anticipate what they might need, without turning that care into a performance. It shows in small things: green tea and cold water arrive without being asked for, as they do in traditional sushi restaurants in Japan.

The plate stays Japanese

Marrakech has no shortage of international restaurants, headline openings or dinners built around spectacle. Perhaps that is precisely what makes IKI interesting. It is not trying to invent a new Moroccan-Japanese fusion, nor to reshape sushi into something more obviously suited to Marrakech. The conversation between the two cultures happens through the room, the hospitality and the craftsmanship, while what appears on the plate remains rooted in its Japanese origins.

There is an educational ambition to the restaurant too. Yokoyama wants guests to understand the rules and rhythms behind the food: seasonality, precision, respect for ingredients and the way a menu shifts according to what is genuinely available on a particular day. That may be the most important part of the move from Fès: a room where the idea can be explained in full, one course at a time.

At the bottom of the menu, after the notes on how to eat each piece, the restaurant prints one last line: “Simply enjoy the moment.” For that, it is worth coming all the way out here, with a seat booked at the counter.