The history of this imperial city is intertwined with many of Morocco’s greatest food traditions — a tour of its vast medieval medina can lead to centuries-old recipes, but also local wines and experimental kitchens.
“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.
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.
“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.
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.
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 .
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