Best Cafés in Fes — Coffee and Mint Tea in the Old City

Fes has two café worlds. In the medina of Fes el-Bali, cafés cluster around the great gates and squares — Bab Boujloud (the blue gate), the Batha area, the Talaa Kebira — and on rooftops that look across the sea of flat roofs to the green-tiled minaret of the Qaraouiyine, home to one of the world's oldest universities. A mint tea or coffee on a medina rooftop, with that panorama and the overlapping calls to prayer, is one of the quiet pleasures of the old city. Down in the lanes, small cafés serve traders, students and travellers a quick coffee between the crowds.

In the ville nouvelle, the French-built new town, café culture takes a more European form: broad pavement terraces along the boulevards where Fassis sit for hours over an espresso or a nous-nous (half coffee, half milk), watching the street. As a major university city, Fes has a big student population, and its cafés are lively, sociable and cheap, especially in the ville nouvelle and around the campuses.

The orders are the Moroccan classics: mint tea (atay), poured sweet and fragrant from a height, and coffee as qahwa kahla (black), nous-nous, or café cassé (espresso with a splash of milk). Medina café-courtyards set in restored riads offer specialty coffee, juices and light food in tiled, plant-filled calm — a cool refuge from the heat and hustle of the souks and a good spot to recharge with wifi.

Whichever world you choose — a medina rooftop, a riad courtyard, or a ville nouvelle terrace — Fes cafés reward lingering. Pick a spot, order a mint tea or a nous-nous, and let an hour pass; no one will rush you from the table.