Best Seafood in Casablanca — From the Port to Your Plate

The classic Casablanca seafood experience is the Marché Central (Central Market) off Boulevard Mohammed V. You walk the fishmongers' stalls, choose your fish, prawns, calamari or oysters by eye, haggle the price by weight, and then take it to one of the small restaurants around the market that will grill or fry it for a modest cooking charge. It is as fresh as seafood gets in the city, and eating this way — pointing at the catch, watching it cooked — is a Casablancais ritual.

Down at the Port de Pêche (fishing port) near the harbour, a cluster of unfussy restaurants serves the day's landings: grilled sea bream and sea bass, fried whitebait and calamari, garlicky prawns, and platters of mixed fried fish (friture) with bread, salad and a wedge of lemon. This is honest, generous, no-frills eating where the quality comes from freshness rather than presentation. The Corniche in Ain Diab adds smarter seafood restaurants with sea views for a more polished meal.

Beyond the grill, look for Moroccan seafood specialities: fish tagine cooked with chermoula (a marinade of coriander, garlic, cumin, paprika and preserved lemon), calamari in tomato sauce, and sea urchins in season. Oysters — many from the Oualidia and Dakhla farms down the coast — appear on ice at the better tables. Sardines, Morocco's national fish, are grilled everywhere and cost almost nothing.

To eat well, go where the turnover is high and the locals are, buy by weight and confirm the price before it hits the grill, and don't overlook the humble friture — a plate of mixed fried fish with lemon and bread is one of the best-value meals in the city.