Rick's Café

A bar and restaurant opened in 2004 in a riad near the old medina, designed to recreate the fictional café from the 1942 film. Rick's Café never existed — the film was shot entirely in Hollywood and Humphrey Bogart never visited Morocco. The replica is excellent nonetheless: a piano, ceiling fans, a pianist who plays "As Time Goes By" twice a night, and enough atmosphere to sustain the myth.

A restaurant and piano bar in the Casablanca medina, built in 2004 by Kathy Kriger, an American diplomat-turned-restaurateur, as a recreation of the fictional Rick's Café Américain from the 1942 film. The film was shot entirely in Hollywood. Nobody involved in the production visited Casablanca.

The restaurant is a faithful recreation of the film set — ceiling fans, arched doorways, a piano, potted palms, Sam's piano (or a piano labelled as such). The food is Franco-Moroccan and competent. The cocktails are themed. The ambience is the point.

Is it worth visiting? If you like the film, yes — it is a well-executed tribute, and the irony of building a physical version of a fictional place is genuinely interesting. If you have no relationship to the film, it is an above-average restaurant in the medina with a good courtyard. The real Casablanca has almost nothing to do with the Casablanca of the film, and the restaurant leans into this gap rather than pretending otherwise.