Best Tagine in Chefchaouen — Rif Mountain Cooking in the Blue City

Chefchaouen sits high in the Rif mountains, and its tagines reflect that cooler, greener setting. Alongside the national classics — chicken with preserved lemon and olives, lamb or beef with prunes — you will find heartier mountain versions made with local goat, seasonal vegetables from the surrounding hillsides, and the herbs and honey the Rif is known for. The cooking is rustic and warming, suited to the town's mountain climate, which can be surprisingly cool.

A local speciality worth seeking out is tagine or dishes featuring the region's fresh goat cheese (jben), and meals that make use of Rif mountain honey, wild herbs and mountain-grown produce. Vegetable tagines are particularly good here, built on the fresh produce that comes down from the hills, and often better and greener than in the drier lowland cities. Kefta tagine with egg and simple chicken tagines are dependable staples in the medina's small restaurants.

The blue medina — famous for its powder-blue walls and lanes — is dotted with terrace restaurants around the main square, Plaza Uta el-Hammam, and up the stepped alleys, many with rooftop views over the sea of blue houses to the mountains beyond. Eating a slow tagine on one of these terraces, with the Rif peaks rising behind the blue town, is the essential Chefchaouen dining experience.

Order a tagine to share with bread, seek out the goat or vegetable versions for something local, and take a terrace table for the view. As everywhere, lunch is the tagine hour, and the small family-run places in the medina offer the most honest cooking.