What to eat in Casablanca — seafood, markets and the cosmopolitan table

Travellers arrive in Casablanca expecting tagine and couscous, and they will find both — this is still Morocco. But Casablanca is not a medina city living on inland recipes. It is a working Atlantic port and the country's commercial capital, and it eats like one: grilled fish and fried calamari, sardines off the boats, shellfish on ice, and a café and brasserie culture inherited from the French colonial decades that exists nowhere else in the country on the same scale. If you want to understand Casa through its food, start with the sea and the city's restless, cosmopolitan mix — and treat the tagines as the bonus.

The Atlantic catch: fish, sardines and calamari

Seafood is the heart of eating in Casablanca. The Atlantic delivers daily, and the local style is deliberately unfussy: whole fish grilled over charcoal, calamari and prawns fried in a light batter, and sardines — often butterflied, stuffed with chermoula (a herb, garlic, cumin and paprika marinade), pressed together in pairs and fried or grilled. A good plate of Casablanca seafood is fish, a wedge of lemon, bread and salad, and very little else. The freshness does the work.

Look out for friture — a mixed fried platter of small fish, calamari and shrimp — which is the city's casual seafood standard, and for the larger grilled fish (sea bass, sea bream, sole) when you want to sit down properly. The lagoon town of Oualidia, a couple of hours down the coast, is Morocco's oyster capital, and its oysters make their way onto the better Casablanca tables — the local luxury worth ordering when you see them.

The Marché Central: pick your fish, have it cooked

The single most Casablanca thing you can do with food is go to the Marché Central (the central market) off Boulevard Mohammed V in the Art Deco centre. You walk the fishmongers' stalls, choose your fish from the morning's catch, and a nearby stall or small restaurant grills or fries it for you on the spot — served plainly with bread, salad and a little sauce. It is fresh, informal and about as direct as eating gets. Our guides can walk you through the market.

A few honest pointers: prices for the fish are by weight and should be agreed before it is cooked, the cooking charge is separate and small, and lunchtime is when the place is busiest and freshest. We name the Marché Central as a real, general place to head for — not a specific stall — because which counter is best genuinely changes with the day's catch.

The port and the Sqala: seafood with the Atlantic in view

For seafood eaten near the water, the port area and the Sqala — the old Portuguese-era bastion at the edge of the medina, now a walled garden setting — are the well-known places to go. The appeal is the combination: simple, well-handled fish and the sense of being on the Atlantic edge of the city rather than inland. As ever, eat what is fresh that day rather than chasing a fixed dish.

Café and brasserie culture: the French-colonial table

Casablanca's café culture is unmatched in Morocco. The French colonial period left the city with grand pavement cafés, brasseries and a habit of lingering over coffee that never went away. Around the Art Deco centre and along the seafront, terraces fill from breakfast onward — espresso, café cassé (coffee cut with a little milk), fresh orange juice and the ever-present glass of mint tea. The brasserie tradition means you can also eat a plate of oysters or a steak frites in a way that feels more Mediterranean port than Moroccan medina.

Pâtisseries carry the same dual identity: French-style cakes and viennoiserie alongside Moroccan pastries — kaab el ghzal (gazelle horns, almond-filled crescents), chebakia (sesame-and-honey knots, especially at Ramadan) and savoury briouat. With a pot of mint tea, these are the city's standard afternoon ritual. Read our full Casablanca destination guide.

Street food: sardine sandwiches, bocadillos and snail soup

Casablanca's street food is fast, cheap and tells you exactly how international the city is. The sardine sandwich — fried sardines or chermoula-stuffed sardines packed into bread with salad and harissa — is the coastal classic. The bocadillo, a filled baguette whose name comes straight from Spanish, reflects the Atlantic coast's Iberian influence; you'll find them stuffed with tuna, egg, fried fish, kefta or merguez.

In the cooler months, look for babbouche — snail soup ladled from steaming cauldrons, sipped from a glass with a pin to fish out the snails and a peppery, herbal broth drunk afterwards as a tonic. Add griddle carts turning out msemen (flaky square flatbread) and harcha (semolina pan-bread), plus skewers of grilled meat, and you have a lunch culture built for a working city. We can build a street-food walk into your day.

Modern Moroccan and the international scene

As the country's economic capital, Casablanca also has its most ambitious dining: modern Moroccan kitchens reworking tagine, pastilla and seafood with a lighter, contemporary hand, sitting beside Italian, French, Lebanese, Japanese and Spanish restaurants. This is the one Moroccan city where an evening out might just as easily be sushi or a brasserie plateau de fruits de mer as a traditional set menu — and where a fine-dining take on Atlantic seafood feels completely at home. It is the most international food scene in Morocco, and that range is the point of eating here.

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