This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
“You need to be in a relaxed mood to make couscous,” says chef Nezha Bouayadi, hair neatly tucked into her black hijab. Arabic R&B music echoes around the walled patio of The Ruined Garden, a restaurant in Fez that champions local Fassi food culture. Like many businesses in the city’s eighth-century medina, this leafy patio restaurant is hard to find, but the successful are rewarded with dishes that rarely make it onto menus — and the chance to see couscous made from scratch every Friday.
Nezha massages grains of semolina through a fine wooden sieve. Then, alternating between fingertips and palms, she instinctively adds splashes of water and flour, rolling the grains around a rough basket until she’s got that couscous texture. Some 20 minutes later, it’s ready to be steamed and plated with saffron-flecked roast pumpkin and courgette, then scattered with sticky caramelised raisins and marinated chickpeas. The couscous is as light as air, absorbing all the rich sweet-savoury juices.
Nezha learnt to roll couscous when she was 16, in preparation for getting married. While the dish remains a Friday lunch staple — part of weekly holy day rituals — few Fez households still make it at home this way; most opt to buy bags in shops and markets.
Chef Nezha Bouayadi learnt to roll couscous when she was 16, in preparation for getting married.
Photograph by LORNA PARKES
While times change, tradition is not taken lightly in Fez’s medina. On first appearances, life in what’s the largest car-free urban area in the world looks little different to how it was a millennium ago. Along thousands of tiny medieval alleyways, whose mud-packed walls are propped up by wooden beams, artisans hammer, polish and paint in cubbyhole shops. Founded by Moulay Idriss — a descendant of the prophet Muhammad — Fez is considered Morocco’s spiritual and cultural heartland. Unlike in Marrakech, where many souks now cater to travellers, Fassis still come out in force to do their shopping here on Saturdays.
“Everything you see is local, seasonal and brought to the market this morning,” says Loubna El Bouchikhi the next day, on a tour of Fez’s kissaria — covered markets where we’re buying ingredients for her cooking class. Negotiating laden donkeys and hand-pulled carts, we pass tables of coriander and parsley before turning into another section where a sea of olives glistens under naked bulbs. In keeping with tradition, everything in the market is halal, and different alleys are dedicated to specific foods — like ancient supermarket aisles.
We arrive at Fez Cooking School later in the day, as muezzins are announcing the adhan (call to prayer) from a mountainside bristling with minarets and Imperial tombs. The school is set on the rooftop of an 18th-century merchant’s house-turned-hotel called Palais Amani, built by a family who grew wealthy trading goods such as wool, and leather from Fez’s tanneries.
Kairaouine mosque’s minaret stands out among the honeycomb rooftops of Fez medina.
Photograph by ISTOCKPHOTO, GETTY IMAGES
“Fez is like a melting pot,” says Loubna, as we stand charring aubergines on an open flame to make zaalouk — a dip similar to baba ganoush that she says was brought to Morocco by Sephardic Jews. Considered holy by Arabs, Fez was the first Moroccan city to establish a mellah — Jewish quarter — in the 15th century, in response to southern Spain’s Jewish expulsion. This ancient mixing of cultures is at least partly responsible for Fez’s reputation as the birthplace of many of Morocco’s signature dishes — pastillas and tagines among them.
“When the Sephardic Jewish people came to Morocco, they brought a lot of cooking techniques,” explains Loubna. Among them were the processing of olives and pickling of vegetables, along with the recipes for pastillas — pies stuffed with cinnamon and meats such as pigeon, dusted with icing sugar. “That combination of sweet and savoury is 100% Sephardic origin,” she says.
Tagines and pastillas are ubiquitous on Moroccan tourist menus, but this evening they’re refreshingly absent at Nur fine-dining restaurant. “We have no pork, no bread, no couscous and no tagine!” says chef-owner Najat Kaanache, ushering me into the kitchen. Najat tells me she’s been doing a photo shoot for her next cookbook, so she’s dressed not in chef’s whites but a richly coloured kaftan that gives her the air of a Moroccan Frida Kahlo.
That impression of an artist at work follows through onto the plate, in all nine beautiful courses, beginning with tiny seaweed tacos of white fish and wakame. Najat’s take on zaalouk follows, with homemade Worcestershire sauce and deliciously crisp tentacles of fried octopus, with a finale of Moroccan halba cake made with fenugreek.
Najat is a remarkable woman. Raised in a simple house near San Sebastian, northern Spain, she went to university in London, and worked with chef Ferran Adrià at El Bulli, where she met Anthony Bourdain, who put her on CNN. She’s also filmed a food documentary for National Geographic with Gordon Ramsay in the Taza mountains north of Fez, where her family are from. Returning to her roots, she opened her first Moroccan restaurant, Nur, in 2017. Two years later the Fez establishment had earned a spot on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
Fez Cooking School is set on the rooftop of an 18th-century merchant’s house-turned-hotel called Palais Amani, built by a family who grew wealthy trading goods such as wool, and leather from Fez’s tanneries.
Photograph by PALAIS AMANI HOTEL
Inspired by Nur’s exclusively Moroccan wine list, I head to the rooftop bar at hotel Riad Fes, one of the medina’s highest vantage points. Up here, across a patchwork of flat-roofed dwellings, I can single out two of Morocco’s holiest sites: the pea-green pyramid roof of Moulay Idriss’s mausoleum, and the tall minaret tower of Kairaouine mosque and university, established in 859 and considered the world’s oldest university.
While alcohol is forbidden in Islam, Morocco’s winemaking heartland has nevertheless thrived around the country’s most sacred city, originating in vineyards established during the French protectorate era (1912-1956). Restaurants and hotels like Riad Fes are champions of local wineries such as Chateau Roslane, whose complex signature Cabernet Merlot is the standout of the five I try, including a Sauvignon Blanc-Chardonnay blend grown close to the UNESCO-listed Roman ruins of Volubilis nearby, a ‘gris’ dry rosé blush from Meknes and a peppery Syrah made near Casablanca.
The roof terrace at Palais Amani riad hotel allows for stunning views of the Fez medina.
Photograph by PALAIS AMANI HOTEL
Ready for dinner, I head back to the medina where queues are starting to form at snack vendors along the ancient main street of Talaa Kebira. The throaty call of a drum guides me to an alleyway so dark I’m half convinced I’m lost. But this is the entrance to Cafe Clock. When Brit Mike Richardson opened this cultural hub in 2007, after a London career in hospitality that included time at The Wolseley, he wanted to create a bridge between travellers and the local community. Today, 40% of the cafe’s footfall is Moroccan — which is no mean feat for a foreign-owned business in Fez. Mike has since opened Clocks in Marrakech and Chefchaouen, but the original — which plays host to a cinema, art exhibitions and regular music performances — is still an institution.
I nab the last seat as a group of musicians in white djellabas (robes) warm up instruments for an aissawa performance showcasing a celebratory form of call and response music from the nearby Middle Atlas mountains. People are drinking tea and milkshakes amid chatter in Darija, Morocco’s Arabic dialect, and I order Cafe Clock’s signature dish: the camel burger.
Lean, nutritious and with its origins steeped in traditions of nomadic Arabic desert culture, camel meat is still sold along Talaa Kebira today — but it’s typically only eaten by Moroccans at celebrations. As I wait for food, the cafe feels like it’s gearing up for a fittingly raucous shindig. The burger arrives, patties piled high with gherkins and homemade tomato and cinnamon ketchup, just as the drumming picks up pace. It’s an unusual taste: gamey, but light. Around me, hands start to twirl, heads bob, people clear their throats to sing. And so, the beat goes on, as it has in Fez for a millennium — just with a few new rhythms.
Squid ceviche is just one of the speciality dishes prepared at fusion restaurant, Nur.
Photograph by JAVIER PEÑAS
1. Nur
The food at this fusion medina restaurant is as cutting-edge as its off-the-wall monochrome decor. The menu by Spanish-Moroccan chef Najat Kaanache offers an eclectic mix of dishes, from calamari with lemongrass broth to duck with artichoke, truffle and Moroccan spices. Tasting menus from US$80 (£63) per person, excluding wine.
2. Abdullah’s tea stall
Affable Abdullah Touati has run a tea counter in Fez medina since 1969, just off the metal-workers’ Place Seffarine. He uses a blend of herbs — peppermint, spearmint, sage, marjoram, absinthe and lemon verbena — grown behind his house on the edge of the city. It’s served to locals and travellers at low plastic stools piled with cushions. 10 MAD (80p) a glass.
3. Foundouk Bazaar
Paper lanterns lead up to inviting roof terraces at this contemporary Moroccan cafe-restaurant above the ancient medina thoroughfare of Talaa Kebira. Popular with young Fassis, the menu runs from dishes such as shakshuka to tagliatelle with feta and olives. The orange-blossom and cinnamon lassi tastes like Morocco in a glass. 175 MAD (£14) for three courses.
4. Bissara soup stands
In the Al Aachabin food section of Fez el Bali medina, split-pea soup is made the traditional way, the peas slow-cooked and smashed with a long wooden pole akin to a baseball bat. Popular at breakfast, it’s served with olive oil and ground cumin. 15 MAD (£1.15) per bowl.
How to do it:
Ryanair is the only airline that flies direct to Fez from the UK, with twice-weekly departures from Stansted. Stays at the 21-room Palais Amani riad hotel, home to Fez Cooking School, start from €196 (£167) per night, B&B; market tours with cooking classes cost €165 (£141) per person. ryanair.com palaisamani.com
This story was created with the support of Palais Amani.
Published in the May 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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