Where are the best places to eat in Fes?

Fes is, to my mind, the soul of Moroccan cuisine, and eating here feels different from anywhere else in the country — older, richer, more ceremonial. The signature Fes experience is dining in one of the grand restored riads or 'palace restaurants' tucked deep in the medina, places with tiled courtyards, fountains, carved cedar and brass lanterns, where you sit for a long, multi-course Fassi feast. You'll typically start with a spread of cooked and raw salads, move through the famous bastilla (pastilla) — that extraordinary pigeon-or-chicken pie dusted with cinnamon and sugar in flaky warqa pastry — then a slow-cooked tagine or melting lamb with prunes, and finish with pastries and mint tea, often to live oud music. It can feel touristy, but the good ones are genuinely delicious and the setting is unforgettable.

What I love most about Fes, though, is the street-level eating, and I'd urge you not to spend every meal in a palace. Around Bab Boujloud (the Blue Gate) and along the medina's main arteries you'll find tiny hole-in-the-wall places and stalls doing the real food of the city: bowls of bessara (a warming split-pea soup with cumin and olive oil, a Fassi breakfast staple), harira, grilled brochettes and kefta sizzling over coals, and sandwiches stuffed with whatever's hot. Look for the stalls mobbed by locals at lunchtime — that's your signal. The R'cif area and the lanes near the Kairaouine have some of the best.

Fes also rewards the curious snacker. Seek out a cup of the city's beloved snail soup (babbouche) from a steaming cart — it's an acquired taste but deeply local — and don't miss sfenj, the fresh, chewy Moroccan doughnuts fried to order in the morning. The medina's hidden bakeries are a delight: many neighbourhood ovens (the ferran) still bake the community's bread and you can smell your way to them. And the dried-fruit and nut stalls, the olives glistening in pyramids, the spice merchants — Fes is a place to graze as much as to dine.

A few honest practical notes. The headline palace restaurants do get booked up, especially in spring and autumn, so reserve a day or two ahead and ask your riad to call. Quality varies — some of the prettiest places coast on atmosphere — so it's worth asking your host which ones the family actually rates rather than just following the crowds. And the medina is a labyrinth; even with a pin on your phone, finding a specific restaurant after dark is genuinely hard, so factor in a guide or the restaurant's own escort for the smarter evening spots. Eat slowly here — Fes food is meant to be lingered over.