Is the food different in Fes? How does regional Moroccan cuisine vary?

Absolutely, and learning to taste the regions is one of the quiet joys of travelling Morocco. The country isn't one cuisine but a patchwork shaped by geography, history and the imperial courts. Fes is widely considered the gastronomic and most aristocratic capital — its centuries as a royal and scholarly city produced a refined, labour-intensive kitchen. This is the heartland of the great savoury-sweet pastilla, of elaborate stuffed dishes, of meticulous pastry work and of subtle, complex spicing. A Fassi home cook will fuss over a dish in ways that border on devotional, and dining in a grand old Fes riad feels like eating Morocco's haute cuisine.

Marrakech, by contrast, has a bolder, earthier, more street-driven personality — this is the city of tanjia slow-cooked in hammam embers, of the smoky Jemaa el-Fnaa grills, of robust, sun-baked flavours that match its red walls. Travel to the Atlantic coast — Essaouira, Oualidia, Agadir — and the menu pivots to the sea: grilled sardines, fish tagines bright with chermoula (coriander, garlic, cumin, paprika and lemon), oysters at Oualidia and whatever the boats landed that morning. It's a completely different, lighter way of eating.

Head south and inland and the food adapts to the land. In the desert and pre-Sahara regions you'll find more dates, almonds and dried fruit woven into dishes, hearty grain and the nomadic favourite medfouna ("Berber pizza," a stuffed bread baked in sand). In the High Atlas, Amazigh (Berber) cooking is rustic and resourceful — tagines cooked over open fires with a hint of woodsmoke, barley dishes, fresh mountain herbs and honey. The far north around Tetouan and Tangier carries a distinct Andalusian-Spanish accent, while Rabat and Casablanca blend it all with a cosmopolitan, French-influenced edge.

What this means for your trip is delicious: don't order the same tagine everywhere. Treat each city as its own food destination, ask locally what the regional speciality is, and let your route become a tasting menu of the country. The pastilla you eat in Fes, the tanjia in Marrakech, the fish at Essaouira and a fireside tagine in the Atlas will tell you more about Morocco than any guidebook — and that variety is exactly why food-led travel here is so rewarding.