Le Pavillon - Selman

Le Pavillon sits at the far end of Selman Marrakech's 80-metre pool, where the turquoise water gives way to green paddocks and the Jacques Garcia-designed stables beyond. It is an open-air restaurant set in the hotel's Spring Garden, shaded by carved mousharabi screens, with tables arranged to face the very thing that makes this address unlike any other in the city: the hotel's private collection of purebred Arabian horses, grazing just metres from your plate. The menu keeps things deliberately uncomplicated. Mediterranean in spirit, it runs through fresh, clean dishes built around good produce rather than elaborate technique. The kitchen lets the setting do the heavy lifting, and it works. But the real draw is Sunday, when Le Pavillon stages what has become one of Marrakech's most distinctive brunch rituals. A generous buffet fills the garden while a Cuban duo plays live, and midway through the meal, Selman's thoroughbred Arabians are paraded through the grounds in a choreographed equestrian show. It is a spectacle that sounds improbable until you see it, and then it feels entirely natural against the backdrop of this family-owned palace. The Bennani Smires family built Selman around two obsessions: hospitality and horses. The breeding programme, Selman Arabians, has won international beauty awards, and the animals here are not decorative props but the living centre of the property. Watching them move through the paddocks from a sunlit table, glass of rosé in hand, is one of those Marrakech moments that belongs to no other restaurant in the city.