Casablanca Authentic Moroccan Cuisine — Restaurant in Halifax

Tried here on a beautiful Wednesday evening in early July 2024. Had reservations for 6pm. We arrived a bit early, probably 5:45, and were greeted immediately. The young server advised us to head upstairs for our table (there are two smaller ones downstairs when you come in the door, but they seem to be used more for other purposes and would be too close to the door to be relaxing). Upstairs has a casual, but definite Moroccan vibe with two, four & six-seater tables, total capacity of 28 I believe? We took a corner table that was a soft booth with cushions. The room painted red & black for the most part, was very warm. The staff turned on the heat pump AC as we sat down and it took awhile to be felt, but at least they had that. Within the hour that we sat there, two other tables filled up, but the place remained very quiet. Food: You get a small plate of white type of bread, which in size would be equal to a large piece of toast, but cut into small segments, still attached, but tearable. It had nothing to dip it in, but I found was fine to just eat as is. A small ramekin of a specific type of marinated olives to snack on, were ok, maybe six or seven of them. started with the traditional Moroccan salad ($25/set) - which is served in a beautiful platter, and held probably about 2/3 cup of each six varieties of salads. The masala caramelized pumpkin is a puree with sesame seeds on top and had the strongest flavor of all the options. My friend didn't love it, but I liked it for just being different, in a very difficult way to explain (we tried figuring out the notes while sitting there, and couldn't LOL). She liked the marinated carrots & potato salad most of the six. The Zaalouk grilled aubergline had a smoky flavor. The beetroot salad was more on the blank side, diced pieces that had an herb, but mild for sure. The machouia grilled bell pepper to me tasted & looked like the eggplant one, but was good. All served cold. My friend's main was the chicken mihamer ($25 - chicken leg with pistil of saffron, meslalla, olives & lemon confit). It was a very beautiful dish, looked well made, and she had no complaints. A good size. My vegan couscous main ($24 - seven vegetables, onion marmalade & chickpeas) was also well presented, a fairly large size, full of flavor. It had a few dates & almonds on top. I decided in advance to eat half and take half home in a doggy bag, which wlil be my leftover lunch today. Although the menu is small, I'd definitely go back here. Friendly service. Street parking is hard to get so try Park Lane. Accessibility: there ARE the two tables on the main level which I am sure they would make available, but a couple of steps to get into the restaurant, so not technically accessible inside. I see photos from other people where there were two outdoor tables set up in the past, which may be an option (although they weren't set...

You'll forgive me for thinking I know Moroccan food: Frequent family meals with Moroccan friends in Vancouver, with their family in Meknes in Morocco, and with a family we met in Fes... Our wedding dinner was prepared by another Moroccan friend (from Oujda) in Vancouver. Our first experience of bstilla, the rightly renowned chicken, egg, and almonds pie in flaky filo-like pastry was in a long-gone Vancouver restaurant, and we've enjoyed it and other Moroccan specialties in restaurants in many different cities in Morocco, and in other places throughout the Middle East and elsewhere... And we often cook several Moroccan dishes ourselves.

If you know and like Moroccan food, you'll certainly recognize Chef 'Imad's dishes, but be prepared for some delicious variations on familiar themes, beautifully presented. Our appetites aren't what they were, so we had a couple of starters, and a bstilla, and that was plenty for us. Smoky eggplant salad with slivers of pickled lemon, pepper and tomato salad, diced carrots and pureed squash in a sweet dressing with coriander, a shrimp, tomatoes, olives and peppers 'salad', and while waiting for the freshly prepared dishes to arrive, Moroccan olives with fresh baked Moroccan bread. As for the bstilla, it was as good as any we've had, flavourful, moist, and like everything else we had, unique.

We're looking forward to return to try Chef 'Imad's take on the other well-known specialties on his menu, and based on last night's experience I'm confident they too will be delicious.

I almost forgot; don't forget to finish with Moroccan mint tea. It's delicious, and it's supposed to be good for...

I usually eat here all the time, great deals and food clearly prepared with care. Whoever was working today around lunch time did not prepare the food properly.

It was the only other thing I ate today so I know for certain that the reason I was sick out of nowhere was probably due to the quality of the meat. My girlfriend couldn’t finish hers because she tasted something odd, but to me it looked fine enough because I don’t believe in wasting food.

Either your staff aren’t washing their hands, or your workers today didn’t cook the Moroccan burger ground beef properly.

Been very ill, throwing up alongside a huge headache, unable to put anything in my stomach since around 3. Now at 11pm I’m still not feeling much better. I know I didn’t catch anything from anyone else 1) because I haven’t left the house in weeks and 2) I haven’t been exposed to anyone else who was sick.

Please be more careful in the future, I love coming to this place so it was a huge disappointment for me having worked in professional food service myself I always respected the quality. But today Someone messed up. I’d encourage management to look into it, because I know from working in a kitchen that if this happened to anyone else it could be very bad for you as a...