In Fez, meals are not structured as "starter-main course-dessert" but around the soufra, a low tablecloth placed on a round table where dishes arrive to be shared by hand from a single communal platter. Bread (khobz) serves as utensil: you pinch the sauce, you grab the meat. The meal follows the rhythm of the house and the week — the frugal everyday, the couscous on Friday after prayer, and always, to close and to welcome, mint tea poured from on high. Frugality is both a virtue and a constraint, especially for one who has known the walls of Kenitra.

Two souls of Fassi cuisine: ras el-hanout, the perfumed blend from the spice merchant ("the top of the shop"), which can contain dozens of spices; and smen, salted butter long fermented that gives tagines and couscous their depth, that taste of storage and patience.