Discovering Casablanca's Culinary Scene: A Guide to the Best Restaurants

Nov 15, 2025 0

Casablanca, a bustling port city in Morocco, boasts a vibrant and diverse dining scene. Its culinary landscape offers everything from umbrella-shaded beach cafes and ocean-view restaurant-clubs reminiscent of the French Riviera, to popular food stalls in the Marché Centrale, riad restaurants in the old medina, and contemporary vegan cafes in upmarket suburbs like Anfa. You'll also find downtown sushi bars and Spanish bodegas, as well as French and Moroccan fine dining restaurants with sky-high city views.

Fine Dining Experiences

Le Grande Table Marocaine

The most beautiful tables in the city are undoubtedly at the sky-high Le Grande Table Marocaine on the 23rd floor of the Royal Mansour Casablanca, with its stunning views over the city to the sea. While the tables are exquisitely laid and the floors inlaid with onyx, Karim Ben Baba’s elegant Moroccan dishes more than live up to the décor.

Le Jasmine

The fine-dining Moroccan restaurant at the Relais & Chateaux Hôtel Le Doge is worth a trip just to sit in the opulent dining room of this 1930s deco gem built by an Italian entrepreneur for his Moroccan wife. Wear something fabulous so you can sweep up the spiral staircase and seat yourself dramatically on the red velvet banquettes beneath the stunning stained glass ceiling.

Unique and Trendy Spots

Le QuatorZe

A secret spot just 15 minutes walk from the Église du Sacré Coeur, Le QuatorZe is a fabulous, low-key restaurant set in an art-deco family villa. Ascend the curvaceous staircase to a charming dining room where tables are laid with pretty vintage linen, crockery and glassware. Then prepare yourself for a cavalcade of refined French-influenced, modern Moroccan food courtesy of self-taught chef Zineb. Maybe start with the artichoke, parmesan and black truffle, then pick a ceviche with a passionfruit or mango dressing, and follow with the fresh fish of the day or quail with caramelised apple. It's the most beautiful food in town.

Iloli

A buzzy little place in Anfa, Iloli is a darling of the creative set who descend on it for lunch and dinner in its sleek, Zen-like interiors. It’s run by husband-and-wife team Yusuke and Noëlle Furukawa, who aim to showcase Japanese cuisine using the best Moroccan ingredients and homegrown vegetables such as daikon, mizuna and shungiku. You can order à la carte or from the chef’s omakase menu. Look out for the black cod with preserved lemon, or Dakhla oysters with ponzu sauce, and the intensely flavoured aubergine sushi with ginger. The bar seating facing the kitchen is a great place to eat if you’re a solo diner or if you want to see the chefs at work.

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NKOA

Fun, contemporary NKOA follows no rules other than to celebrate global flavours, and offer the international residents of Casablanca a taste of everything. One week, the menu might feature Chilean ceviche, then a black-bread burger with fig sauce, followed by Iranian herb frittata. The cooking is full of flavour and the variety keeps locals coming back for more.

Seafood Delights

Le Cabestan

The table to score on the Corniche is undoubtedly cool Le Cabestan in the shadow of the El Hank lighthouse, with unparalleled views of the Atlantic. In the day it has an easy-breezy Riviera vibe but at night, the volume cranks up for clubby DJ sets fueled by creative cocktails. Order the fish, of course: perhaps salt-baked bass or the parrillada, a mix of fish and seafood served a la plancha.

Marché Centrale

At some point you should visit the Franco-Moorish Central Market, which has been supplying locals with fresh fish, veg and spices since 1917. At first light, it hums with activity when crates of icy fish and crustaceans get delivered from just-docked trawlers ready for the morning rush of housewives vying for the best of the day's catch.

Traditional Moroccan Experiences

Dar Dada

Buried in Casablanca’s old medina, this lovely riad restaurant is an architectural delight, and an atmospheric place to dine on Moroccan and Middle-Eastern fare. Classic Moroccan salads and a very delicious fresh goat cheese are followed by tasty tagines and flavourful fish dishes such as sea bass with chermoula or St Pierre with aubergine, tomatoes and onions. The food is well prepared, but it’s the magical atmosphere, musicians, dancers and kind servers that elevate the evening to something memorable.

La Sqala

Now marooned beside the Boulevard des Almohades, opposite the ever-expanding marina, La Sqala, a 17th-century fortress, was once the seafront bastion for the Portuguese. Enter the huge blue door to find yourself in a charming oasis covered in blue and green zellij tiles and shaded by pergolas covered in snaking vines. The eponymous restaurant is a nice spot for a Moroccan breakfast of msemen and beghir pancakes, organic yoghurt, spicy eggs and pastries.

Cafes and Bakeries

Bondi Coffee Kitchen

An Australian cafe serving classic avo on toast, smoothie bowls and poke bowls, gluten-free carrot cakes, raw pressed juices and coconut milk lattes. It attracts an international crowd of remote workers and middle-class hipsters to its industrial-chic space.

Pâtisserie Bennis Habous

Simply the best Moroccan pastries in Casablanca, sold from a colourfully tiled 1930s shop in the Habous neighbourhood. Founded by Hammouda Bennis, the patisserie is now run by the fourth generation of the family. They are most famous for their cornes de gazelle, an almond paste cookie laced with orange blossom water, but there are countless other sweet treats as well as savoury takeaway dishes like chicken pastilla (a thin pastry layered with spiced, shredded chicken). Fill a box, big or small, then head to Cafe Imperial nearby and order a coffee to accompany them.

Organic Kitchen

Looking like it’s just been teleported in from the Bay Area of California, the Organic Kitchen is a temple of healthy eating that showcases the full range of Moroccan produce. Choose from pumpkin soup, quinoa fritters, a plump banh mi or green falafel wrap; or, slurp a Blueberry Nights smoothie made with coconut milk, red fruits, blueberry powder and banana. It’s a great place for breakfast or brunch and the avocado on whole-grain bread is stacked with salmon.

Classic Institutions

Restaurant Le Bavaroise

A local institution going strong since 1968, La Bavaroise is a classic brasserie and serves the best aged, grass-fed beef from the Atlas mountains. Customers come for oysters, beef tartare and succulent steak frites with salad and three sauces (pepper, Roquefort and Béarnaise).

Rick’s Cafe

If you can’t beat them you may as well join everyone else who comes through town at Rick’s, Humphrey Bogart’s supposed gambling parlour in the 1943 film Casablanca. Of course, it isn’t real, but rather a perfect reimagining of the Hollywood fantasy that’s now so meta it’s become its own authentic self, with Issam playing As Time Goes By on the ivories every night. Have a drink in the atmospheric lounge upstairs, where a black-and-white portrait of luminous Ingrid Bergman still watches the action by the glossy bar.

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