FEZ · RESTAURANTS
Restaurant Numéro 7
Chefs-in-residence dining inside Riad 9
Restaurant Numéro 7
Chefs-in-residence dining inside Riad 9
Tucked behind a plain door at 7 Zkak Rouah, deep in the Fes medina, Numéro 7 reads at first like any other riad-style dining room — until you read the blackboard. The menu is written by hand, changes every evening, and is the work of whichever international chef happens to be in residence that month. The restaurant occupies the ground floor of Riad 9, an 18th-century guesthouse run by Bruno Ussel and Stephen di Renza, who treat their kitchen as a temporary stage rather than a permanent address.
The format is a 4–5 course prix fixe at around 350–400 MAD per person, built each day around what came back from the Fassi markets that morning. Visiting cooks — the programme was opened by Jerome Waag from Berkeley's Chez Panisse — take residencies of one to four months, cook alongside local Fassi staff, and leave the menu when their stay ends. The result is a Fes restaurant that never quite serves the same food twice and very rarely serves a Moroccan classic in its familiar form.
The dining room is small, which is part of the point. Reservations go through the restaurant's website or by phone on +212 694 277 849, and they are not optional — the season closes entirely between residencies, so calling ahead also tells you whether anyone is cooking at all that week.