Fez Post-Pandemic
An awful lot of people suffered really badly from the pandemic making an already tough life even more extreme, especially for the poor, which of course is always the case. Many were starting from less than zero as we began to come out of covid, and lots of places only survived by massively pairing back. As food costs rose standards slipped in some places and lots of really good cooks were displaced – many went off to other cities like Marrakech and Casablanca in search of work. Those who came out the other side, however, are now seeing their businesses start to boom. I was here for the 2022 FIFA World Cup: how well the Moroccan team performed did something to the psyche of the nation. There’s a renewed sense of hope and optimism in Fez, and indeed elsewhere, triggered by national civic pride. It really feels like Morocco’s time is now.
What To Expect
It’s good to see the local populace doing well. Small businesses are being opened by young Moroccans, be it holes in the wall selling coffee, vegetarian cafes, or even some quite splashy restaurants. It’s a really good sign, because it’s very easy for a foreigner to swoop in with money to invest – and that is happening too. As far as hotels go, there’s a return to smart little places with five or six rooms rather than giant chains, and a lot more sustainable tourism. Likewise, the crafts for which the city is so famous is taking on a more elevated position whether that’s couture babbouche (leather slippers) or architecturally striking new artisan complexes like Lalla Yeddouna. Complimented by the hefty amounts of cash being invested into both the Fez Medina, the Mellah (Jewish Quarter) and the New Town, the mood is optimistic and there’s a lot to be excited about.
A Lesson in Moroccan Food History
Fez tends to be hidden in the shadow of Marrakesh and forgotten sometimes, which is a shame because it’s such a fascinating place. It’s a window into another world and still feels like going back in time even after 15 years of owning a house here. I think people miss out by not coming here especially if they’re into food. Fez is the cradle of Moroccan gastronomy. Much of what we know about Moroccan haute cuisine – from the manner of working with flavours and ingredients to the way dishes are compiled – came out of the palaces of Fez. Put simply, it’s humble ingredients that are elevated with herbs, spices, honey, rose petals, flower waters, aromatics, nuts, seeds, dried fruits and preserved lemons. The cooking is nearly always long and slow, and with a level of care that is rare to see these days. You only need to witness a Moroccan housewife preparing Friday couscous for her family – steaming it three times, carefully layering in flavours, selecting the best seasonal vegetables – to know that Moroccan cuisine is as much an art form as the lavish design you see in its palaces. Something that you will always read is that the best Moroccan food is found in people’s homes. The longer I’m here the more I believe that to be true. Some people can go away feeling a tiny bit deflated. But Fez has some great places that I always take people to, knowing that they will get a proper sense of what the food heritage is all about and that it will be delicious.
Culinary Highlights in a 17th Century Fassi Townhouse
Darori beautifully expresses everything that I’ve just mentioned. It’s a place to get that deep sense of Morocco’s – and particularly Fez’s – culinary history. It’s my go-to for good, traditional Moroccan home cooking. I go there a lot. In fact, I hosted a big group of chefs and restaurateurs there recently. They had been in Morocco for 10 days and came back saying that Dorori was the best dining experience they’d had their entire stay. It’s local women taking care of the kitchen. The dada (female cook), Amina, is the daughter of a woman who used to work at the palace. She learnt all her recipes from her, and you can taste that finesse in the food. I love that it is really seasonal, so you’ll get beef with artichokes and peas in January, and lamb with quince in the autumn. Her pigeon pastilla (North African pie in filo-like pastry called warka) is sublime, but you have to order it 24 hours in advance. The lamb mechouia or “chawaya” as it’s named in Fez, is traditionally a whole lamb either spit roasted or buried in the embers of a fire. Here it’s adapted to a restaurant setting so it’s a slow-roasted (approximately five hours) shoulder of lamb that ends up with a very crispy skin and is served with bowls of salt and cumin. In a traditional diffa (banquet), it would be served between the pastilla and the tagine as a gentle, easily digestible course between these more lavish dishes. Dorori is in a typical 17th Century Fassi townhouse with giant zouak doors (painted doors typical of old Moroccan houses) and filigree plaster work. The dining room is in the courtyard of a family home, which when paired with this very traditional cooking, means that you’re experiencing something that is very authentically Fez.
More Recuperated Palace Dishes
Palais Faraj is another place that expresses the food culture of Fez very well, but does so in a fine-dining format. It too has a wonderful woman cook, named Bochra, as well as a male chef who looks after the international menu (less successfully). Bochra has been really active in trying to recuperate the traditional palace cooking of Fez. Here you’ll eat things like candied aubergines or cockerel and honey – which you don’t really see anywhere else – as well as more challenging dishes like calf’s foot with chickpeas or spiced tripe. All are excellent.
The Best Chicken Tagine
Climb the stairs to the rooftop dining room of Almandar – an unassuming little restaurant near the old Cinema Amal at r’Cif – and you’ll discover some of the best home cooking in the city. Another team of women take to the stoves to produce heart-warming fare that is rich and generous. The national favourite tagine of chicken, preserved lemons and olives – which can so often be overcooked and dry – in their hands yields spoon-tender meat, sumptuously sauced with a thick onion gravy and bright with zingy lemons and earthy olives. It is for me, the epitome of what made this such a legendary dish in the first place.
As Raw as It Gets
One of my favourite daily rituals in Fez is to go out for street food, particularly in the morning when I can enjoy my favourite Moroccan dish, bissara, that’s typically eaten for breakfast. It’s a very simple but delicious soup of fava beans with cumin and harissa, drizzled with olive oil. My favourite place to do it is at Achabine Souk, where I can eat my fill of local street food for less than five dollars. Achabine is one of several local produce markets where you’ll find fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and live chicken stalls, a little bit of fish and excellent Moroccan street snacks. Importantly, it’s where Moroccans go to eat lunch. It has a whole alleyway of vendors, who’ll do things like big pots of harira, fried chermoula-stuffed sardines and cauldrons of addis (Arabic for lentils) and loubia (white beans) stewed with spices. You’ll get your steamed sheep’s head to pull apart and dip in salt and cumin, and steamed chicken stuffed with coriander and chilli-spiced vermicelli that’s then stuffed into khobz (Arabic word for bread). You’ll also get Rachid’s spectacular chargrilled kefta. He’s the only one doing this in the market so you can’t miss him. The smoke and wondrous smells will lead you to his little stall.
For a More Familiar Taste
Woven between these two extremes of authentic Moroccan cooking are places doing an international spin on things. Dar Roumana does a Franco-Moroccan fusion that combines excellent technique with a dash of Moroccan exoticism. There might be a creme caramel infused with orange blossom water, or a home-cured gravlax with preserved lemons. It does a beautiful lamb tenderloin on a pumpkin puree inspired by a traditional salad, roasted chermoula cauliflower with hummus and yoghurt sauce, pan-fried sea bream with a mussel-saffron sauce, and a divinely dark chocolate tart that’s lightly spiked with spice. By the time you’re on your seventh type of tagine, it’s normal to be craving a different kind of flavour profile – and Dar Roumana always delivers. Many consider it the best food in Fez. It has a lovely setting too: a beautiful courtyard and an intimate dining room. It’s a date night kind of destination, with a jazzy playlist that delivers just the right amount of sophistication. Come early for a cocktail on the roof terrace.
“The Most Beautiful Garden in Fez”
Le Jardin des Biehn (aka Café Fez) is another place where international dishes sit happily alongside traditional Moroccan fare. They lost their chef during the lockdown and went through a couple that weren’t terribly successful, but I’m happy to say that their old chef is back and in excellent form. The last time I was there, I had a really beautiful asparagus mousseline followed by a juicy, tender fillet mignon. When I’ve got a gang of friends in town this place comes in handy because a bunch of them will be wanting a change from Moroccan food while the others will happily eat chicken with preserved lemons and olives every day. Also, the garden is truly lovely. I like coming here for a morning hammam, followed by lunch with a glass of wine and a saunter down the hill back home for a siesta.
More Enchanting Gardens
Riad Idrissy & The Ruined Garden is a small hotel that began doing their riff on Moroccan street food, eventually expanding to heartier classics like couscous and tagine. I still go for the street food and will ideally bring a couple of friends so we can share things like smoky aubergine, fresh Moroccan cheese dips, fried sardine sandwiches and popcorn maakouda (Moroccan fritters – usually potatoes). There’s rumour of charcoal-grilled brochettes and slowly baked lamb shoulder in the coming months – so watch this space. It’s a lovely experience all in all. You’re sitting within the shell of an old riad (traditional Moroccan interior courthouse garden within a house or palace) that collapsed years ago. It has now been planted with vines and creepers, creating a jungly getaway from the frenzy of the medina outside.
Rooftop Aperitifs and Fireside Dining
Ismail is one of the youngest chefs heading a kitchen in Fez at Riad Laaroussa. It’s a joy to see his enthusiasm and passion grow as he develops his non-traditional menu. While the women on his team take care of daily changing Moroccan specials, he focuses on new flavours: lightly battered salt and pepper squid to dip in harissa mayo; an Asian-inspired vegan noodle dish featuring locally made tofu; and grilled sea bass with a Moroccan inspired Grenobloise of figs, almonds and olives. The rooftop setting is spectacular and the hotel occasionally hosts live bands, artist exhibitions and other cultural events.
The Cooking School
The Courtyard Kitchen at Dar Namir is a cooking school inside a house I bought on a whim. In the cold light of day back in Barcelona, I was like, “What the hell am I going to do with this house in Fez?” As a food writer, I always fantasised about having a little cooking school, and it turned out that this was the ideal space for it. It’s very much a home-style cooking school set around a kitchen table. I wanted to see what happened when you played around with ingredients and food heritage beyond existing recipes. A few years ago, I ran a project called Chefs in Residence where I invited chefs from all over the world to live and work in the Fez Medina for about three months. Many chefs came over the course of two years. We opened with Jerome Waag – who was chef at Chez Panisse at the time – and Analiese Gregory who’d been working at Quay in Sydney. Part of the remit was no tagine, no couscous, and they could only buy their products from the Fez Medina or local farms. They also had to train street kids in the art of hospitality at both front and back of house. My hope was that we could contribute to a new chapter in Morocco’s culinary evolution, as I saw happen with the new Spanish cuisines. All the chefs did some really amazing food, including lots of plant-based cooking. The produce is phenomenal and varied that you can experiment in an extraordinary way. That project came to end just as the cooking school was getting going, but I continued with the same ethos: to remain very true to Moroccan flavours and ingredients but to look at them a bit differently. I also didn’t want to compete with Moroccan men and women teaching their food because it is their food and not mine. I still feel very strongly that if you want to learn to make a traditional tagine, it should either be with my assistant Rachida – and we often do a mixture of her dishes and mine as we typically teach five dishes in each class – or another Moroccan cook. The school is open all the time but you have to book in advance. High season in Fez is typically spring and autumn. I close in July and August, because it’s brutally hot, and usually for a couple of months in the winter.
My Favourite Place in Fez
Cafe Clock (مقهى الساعة) is very dear to my heart because it’s the reason I ended up in Fez in the first place. Years ago, I came here to do a story about their camel burger for Conde Nast Traveler. That story became me writing a book for them, which became me buying a house in Fez, which became me opening the cooking school. We still work a lot together, whether it’s trainings with their team, or the Outstanding in the Field event we recently did together at an olive mill near Meknes. Cafe Clock is a wonderful cafe that brings together Moroccans and visitors in the most charming way. It serves a lot of crowd-pleasing dishes that feel like an iteration of Moroccan fast food. It is most famous for its camel burger – served with their taza ketchup spiced with cinnamon and chilis – but does things like smokey zaalouk (Moroccan salad made with cooked eggplants and tomatoes), goat cheese briouats (Moroccan fried triangular pastries a bit like samosas), chicken r’fissa (a celebratory Moroccan dish where the chicken is stewed in lentils and fenugreek and served on a bed of shredded trid pastry), and a wonderful lamb medfouna (spiced lamb cooked in dough and eaten much like a pizza with plenty of coriander chutney). In the desert, medfouna is meat wrapped in bread and baked in the sand, but here they do it at the ferran, the community oven which they also use to make a terracotta cooked beef specialty called tangia. I have a ritual of going there for a late breakfast of Berber eggs (which is a shakshuka essentially) with the best coffee in town. They also make a double-chocolate cheesecake that’s seriously decadent. Food aside, when Mike [Richardson] conceived the idea, it was as a cultural cafe so there’s always a lot going on: live folk music, storytelling, calligraphy workshops and cookery classes. I always tell people that Cafe Clock should be their first stop in Fez. It’s the best way to get a handle on what’s happening in the city at the time of your visit.
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