Cabbagetown’s newest restaurant transports guests to Morocco

Name: Rayah Contact: 507 Parliament St., @rayahcafe
Neighbourhood: Cabbagetown Chef-owner: Wafa El Rhazi Accessibility: Not fully accessible

Wafa El Rhazi grew up in Paris, the daughter of a Moroccan father and an Algerian mother, and spent her summers taking road trips to North Africa—France, Spain, the ferry to Tangier, and then on to family, couscous and sun. “It was a kind of pilgrimage,” she says. That layered identity is the culinary and cultural backbone of Rayah.

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Before opening Rayah, Wafa spent a decade in the tech world—including a stint at Google—while spending most of her spare time and money on travel and food. She moved to Toronto in 2021 on a working holiday visa, had her second child in late 2023 and used her maternity leave to start building a restaurant. Rayah is the result: a French Moroccan café open all day for pastries and mint tea in the mornings and mezze-style starters and warmly spiced tajines in the evenings.

“I wanted to create an immersive experience of the real Morocco I grew up in—not the fantasy version with camels and belly dancers,” she says. You can feel the connection to that Morocco in every thoughtful detail: a mounted display of traditional leather slippers handcrafted in Fez, semolina crêpes served warm with honey and mint tea poured from a height to release its herbal aroma.

The Food

French and Moroccan influences run throughout. There are buttery croissants, savoury brioche buns and strong coffee in the morning. For dinner, mezze-style starters, couscous bowls and classic Parisian bistro dishes are reworked with North African warmth. The lamb tajine—sweet-savoury and slow-cooked with prunes and apricots—is served not with couscous but with creamy gratin dauphinois. In Paris, the bistro staple is sausage and mash; here, it’s house-made merguez sausage over buttery potatoes, finished with jus.

Rayah’s menu is built to suit any part of the day: the café sells house-made pastries from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and dinner starts at 6 p.m. Coming soon: brunch.

The Drinks

There’s no alcohol at Rayah, but it isn’t missed. Moroccan mint tea is freshly brewed, and French café staples—espresso, café crème, noisette—are all on offer, along with fresh-squeezed juices and a growing list of zero-proof cocktails built with high-quality spirit alternatives. There’s also a lineup of diabolos, a French summer classic made with sparkling water and fruit syrup in nostalgic flavours like banana, violet and orgeat.

The Space

At the front is the café counter, lined with pastries and coffee service. Beside it, the dining room channels a classic Parisian brasserie: globe lights, bistro mirrors, and half-panelled walls layered with Moroccan details like handwoven baskets, family photos, and a 1960s radio that belonged to Wafa’s husband’s grandfather. A hallway styled like a Paris Métro station, complete with authentic signage from Barbès-Rochechouart (a neighbourhood central to Paris’s North African diaspora), connects the dining room to the sunroom, which is bright and relaxed, filled with Moroccan lanterns, instruments and rugs. Beyond that, there’s a secluded plant-lined patio that feels worlds away from Parliament Street.