Fez Signature · Sweet-Savory Pie
Pastilla (Bstilla)
Photo: drea from Vancouver, Canada / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
The original version wasn't made with chicken at all — it was built around pigeon, and that pigeon filling is still considered the traditional, more prized version in Fez.
Shredded meat, almonds, and warm spices are layered inside sheets of hand-stretched warqa pastry, folded into a flat pie, and fried or baked until golden, then finished with a dusting of cinnamon and powdered sugar. Fez is widely regarded as the dish's birthplace and still sets the standard other cities copy.
Why it's made this way: As Morocco's historic culinary capital, Fez developed pastilla as a showpiece dish for royal and wealthy households, and its distinctive mix of sweet and savory in one pie became a marker of the city's refined cooking style.
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Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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