What food is Fes famous for?

Ask any Moroccan where the country's finest cooking lives and they'll say Fes — and they're right. As the spiritual and imperial heart of Morocco, the medina kept centuries of court kitchens, Andalusian refugees and master cooks (often the dada, the venerated women cooks of grand households), and the result is a cuisine of almost obsessive refinement. When I bring guests to a riad table in Fes, I tell them to come hungry and unhurried, because a true Fassi meal unfolds slowly and deliberately.

The crown is pastilla. Layers of paper-thin warqa pastry enclose slow-cooked pigeon (or chicken, more common now), simmered with onions, eggs, saffron and ras el hanout, scattered with toasted almonds, then dusted with cinnamon and icing sugar. That first forkful — shattering pastry, savoury spiced meat, the whisper of sugar — is one of the great taste experiences in world cuisine, and Fes does it better than anywhere. There's a seafood version on the coast, but the original belongs here.

Beyond pastilla, Fassi tagines are jewelled and patient: lamb with caramelised onions, honey and almonds (mrouzia), prunes plumped in cinnamon syrup, or quince in autumn. The city is also famous for its sweets — kaab el ghzal (gazelle horns) filled with orange-blossom almond paste, briouats, and the delicate, layered pastries served with mint tea. Even everyday dishes here carry an extra flourish.

Part of what makes Fassi food special is provenance: the medina still has its own farmers, herbalists in the souk el attarine selling saffron and rosebuds, and bakers who fire communal ovens (ferran) where families bring their bread and tagines. I love walking guests through that supply chain before we eat, so they taste the city's history on the plate. A dinner in a restored Fes riad, with a procession of salads, pastilla and tagine, is the single best meal I program in Morocco.