Casablanca eats like a port city that never had to perform for visitors: Atlantic fish grilled at the fishing docks, snail broth from evening carts, gazelle horns baked in a 1930s Habous oven. Three days of markets, tapas cellars and mint tea.
The 1917 covered market off Boulevard Mohammed V: pyramids of violet olives, preserved lemons, ras el hanout blends and Atlantic fish on ice. Open 06:00–20:00 daily; buy fish at a stall and a back-alley grill cooks it for you.
Inside the working fishing harbour, past the trawler moorings, a warehouse dining room serving grilled sole, fried calamari, sea urchin and Atlantic prawns since the 1950s. Lunch service 12:00–15:30; taxi in, the gate walk is long.
Founded in 1930 in the arcaded lanes of the Habous quarter, Bennis bakes kaab el ghzal, briouat with almond paste and ghriba in a wood-fired oven visible behind the counter. Sold by the kilo in its signature blue boxes.
From late afternoon, snail carts set up along Rue Allal Ben Abdallah and around Place des Nations Unies. A bowl of babbouche comes in a broth of thyme, liquorice root, aniseed and orange peel, drunk down after the snails.
Moroccan breakfast in the garden courtyard of an 18th-century Portuguese bastion on Boulevard des Almohades: beghrir semolina pancakes, msemen with amlou, khlii-and-egg tagine, olives and a pot of mint tea. Served 08:00–16:00.
Casablanca's oldest Moroccan restaurant, open since 1952 in a riad-style house on Rue du Prince Moulay Abdellah, with a century-old fig tree shading the patio. Pastilla with pigeon, lamb tanjia and seven-vegetable couscous on Fridays.
The Gauthier quarter's French-Moroccan patisserie since 1997: millefeuille and éclairs in the same window as cornes de gazelle and chebakia, with nous-nous — half espresso, half hot milk — at the pavement tables. Open 07:00–21:00.
A Spanish-Moroccan tapas cellar on Rue Allal Ben Abdallah facing the Marché Central: patatas bravas, tortilla, grilled chorizo and Meknès reds by the glass under Cuban posters. Kitchen 12:00–15:00 and 19:00 until late.
Sfenj — unsweetened ring doughnuts fried in a vat of oil and threaded onto a palm-frond string to carry home — are sold from dawn at hole-in-the-wall fryers around the Habous market. Eaten hot with sweet mint tea.
A 1958 Marseillais-Moroccan seafood taverna on Boulevard Houphouët-Boigny, still in the founding family: fried whitebait, garlic prawns, grilled dorade and a paper-tablecloth bar counter. Closed Sundays, packed from 13:00.
The old medina's food souk at Bab Marrakech: barrels of cracked green and purple olives, preserved lemons, dried figs, cold-pressed argan oil and blocks of amlou almond paste. Vendors hand you a taste before you commit.
A 1920s Art Deco bar on Boulevard Mohammed V where Antoine de Saint-Exupéry drank between Aéropostale mail flights: zinc counter, Casablanca beer on tap, steak-frites, and a room barely altered since the Protectorate.