Mike Richardson came to Fes after a career in London restaurants — The Wolseley and The Ivy among them — and in 2007 he opened Café Clock inside a 250-year-old courtyard house at 7 Derb el Magana, just off Talaa Kebira. The address takes its name from the Bou Inania water clock directly across the lane, the 14th-century hydraulic mechanism that visitors still pause in front of. The café spreads upward across multiple floors and a rooftop with a view of the surrounding minarets.

Most people arrive for the camel burger. The meat is bought from butchers along Talaa Kebira itself, served on a soft bun with gherkins and a house ketchup spiked with tomato and cinnamon — National Geographic has called it gamey but light. The rest of the menu reads as Moroccan home cooking translated for a café room: tagines, salads, mint teas, fresh juices, baked sweets. But Café Clock is just as much a programme as a restaurant, and the printed-event board on the way in is usually busier than the kitchen board.

The cultural side runs Arabic and calligraphy lessons, regular oud and storytelling evenings, cooking workshops, art shows by emerging Moroccan artists, and film screenings in a small upstairs cinema room. Sunday early evening is reserved for Houariyat concerts — an all-female drumming and singing tradition with roots in southern Morocco — performed on the upper floors. The model has since travelled: there are sister cafés in Marrakech, Chefchaouen and at Scorpion House in Moulay Idriss, all run on the same blueprint.