We were only in Casablanca for forty-eight hours, but during that time, I learned that the city is chaotic and too large for me, but that they have some excellent restaurants. In the short time, we were there, we visited the famous Rick’s Café, a Spanish Restaurant called Casa Jose Gauthier and La Taverna du Dauphin.
We had incredible meals in each of them for not a lot of money. In Tangier, many restaurants have the same “family outing” menu which offers pizza, pasta, some Moroccan dishes, and sandwiches.
There are a handful of restaurants that offer seafood, international cuisine, or Moroccan and sell alcohol. These can be much more expensive and fewer to chose from. That doesn’t seem to be the case in the Casablanca metropolis.
Rick’s Café who got its fame from the 1942 film, Casablanca, opened in Casablanca since 2004. It is designed to recreate Rick’s Café bar made famous by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in the film. The restaurant is in a large villa with the piano bar located on the first floor.
The menu is upscale and varied, and I had a goat cheese and fig salad and Ben had a shrimp and avocado salad lamb shank tagine.
Casa Jose Gauthier serves a large variety of Spanish food. We ordered from their tapas menu. We had a large variety of foods including manchego cheese, marinated anchovies, fish eggs, salad and octopus with a bottle of wine.
The crowning glory of these three restaurants, in my opinion, was at La Taverna du Dauphin. We started our meal with Daklha oysters, which are like biting into the sea. I had never had them before coming to Morocco and they set a new standard on oysters. They were served on the half shell with lemon.
We also split a delicious salad of chicory and blue cheese with a delicious vinaigrette. For my entrée, I had pan-seared scallops with a creamy risotto and my husband chose a mixed grilled platter.
All of these meals were in the $20-$30 range per person including alcohol.
I have to return to Casablanca soon to pick up my passport. I will definitely make time to enjoy another wonderful meal!