Alain Ducasse in Rabat: Aldabaran opens on the 33rd floor
His first restaurant in Morocco sits at the top of the Waldorf Astoria in the Mohammed VI Tower: 66 seats, a Riviera menu built on Moroccan produce, chef Morgan Perrigaud.
Alain Ducasse has opened Aldabaran on the 33rd floor of the Mohammed VI Tower, inside the Waldorf Astoria Rabat-Salé: the first restaurant by Alain Ducasse in Rabat and the first under his name in Morocco.
The opening was reported from 28 September by the French and Moroccan press and confirmed on 2 October by Hospitality & Catering News. The kitchen is run by Morgan Perrigaud, whom the critic Gilles Pudlowski describes as a Ducasse protégé arriving from Doha. Aldabaran serves breakfast, lunch and dinner every day of the week; no prices have been published.
The name refers to the brightest star in the Taurus constellation. According to France Net Infos, the room covers 510 square metres and seats 66, behind floor-to-ceiling windows facing Rabat, Salé, the Bouregreg valley and the Atlantic.
A Riviera menu 33 floors up will be judged on how much of Morocco reaches the plate.
What Alain Ducasse in Rabat serves
The template is the French Riviera, the produce largely Moroccan. The menu lists petits farcis, gambero rosso with ricotta tortellini and lamb with caponata; Pudlowski adds barbajuans, panisses, pissaladière, blue lobster in a spiced cookpot and a citrus granita. Breakfast brings the Ducasse cookpot of eggs and mushrooms with Wagyu ham, house pastries and warm madeleines served at the table.
Citrus comes from L'Agrumiste, an orchard near Fès that grows more than 250 varieties, among them bergamot, yuzu and mandarin. The wine list pairs Moroccan labels with Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhône and the Loire. Pierre-Yves Rochon, who also designed the hotel, mixed Art Deco lines with zellige, Meknès damascene work and Fès pottery. Readers who know Moroccan cooking through the dishes of Marrakech and where to eat them will recognise the larder, not the recipes.
A 250-metre tower and a second project in Fès
The Waldorf Astoria opened on 20 April in the 250-metre Mohammed VI Tower, the tallest building in Morocco, developed by Othman Benjelloun's O Capital Group, Le Matin reported. It has 55 rooms and suites and a collection of nearly 7,000 artworks. Hilton cites more than 18 million tourist arrivals in Morocco in 2025 to justify the bet. The hotel's other restaurant, Brasserie Magnolia, is led by chef Lahcen Hafid.
Ducasse said the room celebrates "the vibrancy of local Moroccan ingredients". The test after Alain Ducasse in Rabat is in Fès: at the Palais Jamaï, Pudlowski reports, he is preparing Dar Jamaï Alain Ducasse with Fatema Hal, who cooked at Mansouria for four decades, plus an Italian table called Brezza, both planned for the end of the year.
The supply chain matters as much as the view. Moroccan farming is under pressure, as the water shortage hitting Souss-Massa tomato growers shows, and a Riviera menu 33 floors up will be judged on how much of Morocco it actually puts on the plate.
