Fez: Food and Restaurants by Fiona Dunlop
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Ryad Mabrouka
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Aristocratic, cultured, deeply religious, Fez has to be the most compelling medieval city in the world. Its site, too, is spectacular, spilling over fertile hills between the Middle Atlas and Rif mountains of northern Morocco.
This is where to taste velvety tagines like nowhere else, to sample sweet couscous cooked to a 13th-century recipe, to crunch the featherlight pastry of a bstela or to dip into a baroque selection of salades marocaines. And while savouring these exotic flavours in palatial settings, you cannot fail to feel the heartbeat of the city’s 1300 centuries of history. Surprisingly little has changed over that time.
Five times a day the muezzin echo through the labyrinthine souks, around lofty medersa (Islamic schools) of carved cedarwood, delicate plasterwork and multi-coloured mosaic tiles, in funduk courtyards or down shadowy lanes where the only possible form of transport is a donkey or mule.
As the strident tones clash, each of the hundreds of mosques tries to outdo the next, from a one-man show to the master of them all, the great Kairaouine Mosque dating from 857AD. Radiating around it are nine thousand twisting alleyways and cul-de-sacs. This is Fez-el-Bali, the walled medina or old town, that in the 13th century expanded to Fez el-Jdid, once home to a large Jewish population, and under French colonial rule to the Ville Nouvelle.
Colour, light, shade, pattern, aromas and an unrivalled wealth of produce from the surrounding hills create a sensorial spectrum like no other. Back in the 16th century, the adventurer Leo Africanus marvelled at this abundance: “I have never seen anywhere, neither in the whole of Africa, nor Asia, nor Italy, a market where one finds such a number of goods…”.
Down at Place R’cif market, the tantalising daily offerings still encompass camel-meat and seasonal snails, while at the top of the hill, Tala’a Kbira, the longest commercial street in the medina, breathes food in every guise before it merges into Souk Attarine, a treasure trove of saffron, coriander, cumin, dried rose-buds. As its name changes according to each dominant trade, this main artery reveals the backbone of Fez, a city formed not only by philosophers and imams but also by artisans and specialist traders.
Inevitably, names occasionally reflect the great Fassi obsession with food, as in a square named chickpea (Hmamsiyine) or a mosque called fish (Jamaa l’Hout). One step further, and you are indulging. A typical dinner kicks off with multiple salades marocaines, pure heaven to any vegetarian as they combine tenderly cooked vegetables with a fragrant balance of spices, herbs and occasionally a sweet edge of sugar, cinnamon or flower-water. Soups range from sustaining harira (lentil, tomato and chickpea soup) to light tadeffi (garlic and mint soup). The main course might be couscous aux sept légumes (which includes lamb), sweet pigeon bstela, méchoui (spit-roasted lamb) or the multi-faceted tagine. This comes in over sixty possible combinations of meat, poultry or fish with vegetables and fruit. Slow-cooked in a precisely coded sauce so that no individual flavour dominates, it is a perfect allegory for Fez’ culinary influences. Berber, Levantine, Tunisian, Jewish, Andalucian: over the centuries, each one was stirred into what became a very harmonious pot. As for dessert, there is rarely room for more than a plate of sliced juicy oranges sprinkled with icing-sugar and cinnamon.
Fassi cuisine peaks in refinement at the restaurants of certain riads, stimulated by a healthy rivalry between their owners, the city’s noble families. “This house belonged to my grandfather” says Kenza El Abbadi, gesturing at the plushly furnished, soaring patio of La Maison Bleue. “When my father opened the hotel and restaurant in 1996 it was the first in the medina – and everyone thought he was mad!” Now, with over 120 official guest-houses flourishing, he has been proved right. “We only use traditional family recipes” insists Kenza, “And in fact my 92-year old grandmother still drops by daily to supervise the cook, Sfia. Everything is made from scratch, from the pastry to the bread rolls.”
Some dishes never appear on the set menu, couscous for example, as Kenza maintains “you can get it anywhere”. Although dishes change daily according to the season and Sfia’s mood, there is one constant, La Maison Bleue’s signature dessert. This is a delicate bstela au lait, a loosely layered pastry enveloping oranges, almonds and a cream laced with orange blossom water. Eat it on the roof-terrace looking over the rooftops to the hills and you taste Fassi history, while Fassi magic ensures that even the satellite dishes resemble snowflakes.
With so many native gourmets, standards have to be consistently high. By general consensus, the top medina restaurant is L’Ambre, at Riad Fès, a vast, coolly elegant 18th-century palace full of sharp contemporary features. Many of the recipes come from the owner’s wife, Fouzia Sefrioui. “I married very young and actually learnt to cook afterwards with my mother who was part Marrakshi, part Fassi” she explains. “A lot of families teach their daughters before marriage, making them do a kind of apprenticeship with different aunts, as each one has a culinary speciality.”
In the old days, too, many families had their African dadas, the Moroccan equivalent of a nanny-cum-cook (a still controversial slice of history, as some were originally slaves) who cooked family dishes with utter devotion. “My father was raised by his dada, and she followed him when he married, so I learnt a lot from her too” adds this elegant lady, always on the move.
Fouzia’s merciless eye for detail and sophisticated palate has helped form the techniques of Kenza Samih and Abida Khadija who cook exquisite dishes for the intimate, modern restaurant. This is where to try l’hame tfaya, richly spiced lamb and saffron served with toasted almonds and a sweet carrot jam, or frakh maamar, tender pigeon stuffed with couscous, raisins and almonds. The little salads are pure textural genius too, whether a velvety blend with a gentle burn of green peppers, chilli pepper and coriander, baked quince with cinnamon and orange blossom water or honeyed tomatoes.
From Riad Fès, myriad lanes wind past entire houses held up by hefty wooden struts (a sign of impending collapse arrested by UNESCO) where you might spot a pink wall with a cascade of blue plumbago, a woman shrouded in full niqab or a man in a flowing djellaba and pointy yellow leather babouches. Finally you step through the massive wooden doorway of an old classic, Dar El Ghalia. This rambling palace became a restaurant 30 years ago, well before adding on accommodation. Today only guests can feast in the patio, in salons or on the roof-terrace, where deliciously authentic cuisine is supervised by Nadia Lebbar.
According to her energetic husband, Omar, whose grandfather built the riad “Real Fassi cooks start to learn at the age of 10, and by 20 they know something!” He explains, too, the protocol of cooking for guests that dominated Moroccan society. “In large families such as the Glaoui, endless courses were prepared to give their guests choice. This was pure courtesy, just in case they didn’t like something, because nobody could possibly eat it all. And nor was there any difference between what the master and his employees ate – except that the employees came last.”
At the bottom of the hill it is hard to miss the towering structure of the Palais de Fès, a rambling restaurant and guesthouse piled on top of a huge carpet-shop and reached by a steep, tight staircase, aka the “Berber lift”. Up on the top terrace, beneath a trellis which leaves tables dappled with diamond shadows, sits the ever-vigilant maître, Azzedine Tazi. After his first restaurant burned down, he bought this building. “I was nostalgic for the medina, it reminded me of my childhood. Look at these views!” he exclaims.
Over the years his well-heeled clientele has included presidents (Ronald Reagan, Giscard d’Estaing) and fashionistas (Jean-Paul Gaulthier), although he insists “We have plenty of Moroccan guests too – a good sign”. The offering of salads is impressive but quickly surpassed by a fish bstela, an in-house speciality which mixes cod with prawns, vermicelli, spices and herbs. It is moist, crunchy, subtle, quite divine. With little false modesty, Tazi claims that his restaurant is the best in Fez, but then aren’t they all?
As the sun begins to dip and the light fades, the steady hammering of the coppersmiths around Place Seffarine slows, shopkeepers pull down their shutters and market produce is cheerfully packed up. Then a lone muezzin rings out. The wail is urgent, insistent, soon joined by another, then dozens more. Perhaps somewhere beneath the surface of Fez-el-Bali’s deeply rooted traditions, there is a call to renew?