What is northern Moroccan (Tetouan/Tangier) cuisine?

The north of Morocco eats differently, and you can taste the geography immediately: the Strait of Gibraltar is just a glimpse away, Spain almost close enough to touch, and the cities of Tetouan, Tangier, Chefchaouen and Larache absorbed waves of Andalusian Muslims and Jews expelled from Granada. The result is the most refined, Mediterranean-leaning cuisine in the country — lighter, more seafood-driven, and laced with Spanish echoes.

Tetouan is the jewel. Its UNESCO medina kept the Andalusian culinary heritage alive, and Tetouani cooking is famous for its delicacy — exquisite pastilla, tagines perfumed with subtler spicing, and intricate pastries. You'll find dishes that betray their Iberian roots, like fideos (fine noodles cooked like a paella or in broth) and the use of more vegetables, herbs and fresh cheese than in the south. The medina's tiny eateries serve some of the best home-style food in Morocco.

Tangier and the coast are all about the sea: grilled and fried fish straight from the Mediterranean and Atlantic, prawns, calamari, and a cosmopolitan café culture that's part Moroccan, part Spanish, part old international. A bowl of bissara — silky split fava or pea soup, blitzed smooth, pooled with olive oil, cumin and a dusting of paprika, mopped up with bread — is the northern breakfast and street food par excellence, and pure comfort on a misty Rif morning.

Up in Chefchaouen and the Rif mountains, the food turns rustic and dairy-rich: fresh goat's cheese (jben), local honey, olives and olive oil, hearty vegetable tagines, and that same bissara. I love sending guests north precisely because it upends expectations — the blue city's goat cheese drizzled with honey, a Tetouani pastilla, fideos by the harbour. It's Morocco with a Mediterranean accent, and it rounds out a trip beautifully.