EL FORNO
European restaurant in Fes el-Bali, Fes
$Price
Fes219 Rue Talaa Kebira
About this restaurant
EL FORNO is a european table in Fes. Fassi cooking is the slowest and most layered in Morocco. Prices sit at the budget end of the city.
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What you'll eat at EL FORNO
EL FORNO sits in the international side of the Moroccan dining map in Fes, which is a broad category that benefits from being unpacked. Here is what the kitchen is likely reaching for.
The international category in Morocco covers kitchens that draw on multiple traditions without being strictly one of them. Lebanese is the biggest subset — mezze tables of hummus, muhammara, fattoush, tabbouleh, kibbeh, shawarma, grilled halloumi, and a long warm-bread section — and the best versions in Morocco run close to what you would eat in Beirut. Turkish kebabs, Spanish tapas-adjacent small plates, and Mediterranean mezze have all quietly expanded the mid-tier dining map.
American-style cooking has a serious following in Casablanca and Marrakech, built around burgers, steaks, ribs, and brunch plates. The better burger rooms here grind their own beef, bake their own brioche, and list the cut on the menu. Steaks run Angus or local highland beef; ribs are usually slow-cooked for hours before finishing. Brunch is a real weekend ritual, often overlapping with the Moroccan brunch tradition of msemen, eggs, and olives alongside pancakes, avocado toast, and French toast.
Fusion is where you have to read the room carefully. The best Moroccan fusion cooking uses Moroccan ingredients — saffron, preserved lemon, argan oil, harissa, chermoula — inside a non-Moroccan technique frame, and treats both sides seriously. The weaker versions feel like one menu bolted onto another with no real logic. When a chef is genuinely bilingual in two food cultures, you get things like tagine-braised short rib with gnocchi, or preserved-lemon beurre blanc over local sea bream, and it works. Ask what the kitchen is actually proud of and order that.