Taverne du Dauphin — Restaurant in arrondissement de Sidi Belyout مقاطعة سيدي بليوط

This place is terrible and the seafood will probably make you sick. Avoid it at all costs. We waited 20 minutes to be seated even though there were plenty of open tables in plain sight. That should’ve been the warning. I had to place four different orders for a single bottle of wine before they finally found one available. When the waiter eventually brought it, he opened the bottle and poured both glasses without offering either of us a taste or even hinting like he was going to ask—he just outright poured our glasses for drinking. And he didn’t refill them once after that, at all.

Shortly after we were seated, he brought out a ramekin of olives and a dish of aioli, but with no bread and no utensils. I had to ask three times before getting them.

As for the menu, most of the seafood options weren’t actually available—only crab and fish. They present a deli-style case showing off seafood that you can supposedly have cooked to taste. This display is a straight-up con. You’ll see shaved ice surrounding large crab shells & legs, decoratively dressed up like a seafood fantasy, but when it comes time to order, almost none of what you see is actually available. Just some sad-looking fish and crab, if you’re lucky. It's window dressing and theatre to bait the clueless.

The waiter couldn’t explain anything on the menu—we were basically ordering blind. He had no idea what was available and had to check with the kitchen for everything we asked about it—no lobster, no shrimp, no oysters, no squid, no octopus, on and on. What kind of seafood menu serves no seafood? I asked for the ribeye bc I didn’t trust their seafood; my partner ordered “steamed crab” because she’s stubborn and that’s what she wanted. I say “steamed crab” in quotes because what she got was a flipped-over crab shell stuffed with cold shredded crab salad pretending to be a dish. It wasn’t hot. It wasn’t whole. It wasn’t steamed. It was pure deception.

I tried explaining the issue to the waiter in English, broken French, and broken Arabic, and still got nowhere. The waiter not only didn’t care, he pretended he couldn’t understand me in the three main languages spoken in Casablanca! I didn’t bother asking for the manager—no way a scam like that happens without the manager’s full knowledge and approval.

We both shared a riche salad which to be fair was good. The ribeye showed up a full 30 minutes after we’d already finished the other two plates. No apology, no explanation—just delay and incompetence. The steak itself was really sad, grizzle, fat with a side of beef. Why not just buy better meat and charge more?! So the sequence of how we got our food, was wine, olives and aioli, later some bread, main course 1, appetizer salad, main course number 2. The appetizer arriving after the main course is absurd, but that’s what happened. What a very sad and disgraceful Mickey Mouse operation!!

I debated whether or not to leave a tip. I paid in cash and waited to see if the waiter would bring back my change. Not only did he not return it, he didn’t even ask—just pocketed it outright. In the end, I let him keep the change, a little over 10%, because frankly, if he’s that shameless and thoughtless, he needs the money more than I do. A small price to pay to be done with this dive.

Anyone giving this place a glowing review either got lucky or doesn’t know what a decent restaurant looks like. I wish I’d never gone....

We came here due to the high ratings. We really don’t understand the low standards of the people who wrote the 5 star reviews.

-ambience: the non smoking area is upstairs. Science and common sense dictates that smoke rises and gets trapped upstairs. We were brought back to 1990 and lost our appetite.

-service: the servers are very attentive, and we had 2 serving us. Their emotions were worn on their face after this. We ordered the steak, and asked for it to be medium. It came rare so we sent it back. It returned medium rare, so we sent it back. They kept insisting that we wanted it well done so in the end that’s how they made it. We also had to ask for a steak knife the last time. They only provided us with the same butter knife that was for the bread.

-food quality: when you look at the kitchen, the seafood looks fresh. However when the food arrived, the fish was over cooked, the squid was salty. The fried fish all have bones, but not fried enough to eat all the bones. The chef were not able to control the steak quality and a low quality cut. The fries were soft. The veggies were removed from the steak plate after it was sent back. The shrimp and avocado tartar was fishy. The tartar was sour like mayo and vinegar? It did not taste like tartar.

-overall value: the set meal was 140dh and the fish trio was 180dh. This is expensive in Maroc and the quality is not worth this price. The price is for the service and building setting. It’s in a great location and a nice building. It’s too bad the indoor smoking ruins the experience for non-smokers. The food quality is very subpar for this price.

-1 star because the food was edible, we were seated at a decent table, and the oysters, drinks and dessert were great, mind you the drinks came from a bottle.

Please note that I may have high standards due to being from Canada and having travelled Asia, Europe, and North and South America. I am comparing to those continents. If you are local, I am sorry if I offended...

This was the ok-est meal ever.

We ended up here when our destination ended up being closed and we had to find something.

The restaurant was nice, going for a finer dining look and feel on the outskirts of the Old Town. They did have a nice, air conditioned, non-smoking area upstairs - so that was awesome.

My 7 year old was delighted to see Wimbledon on TV and was thoroughly enjoying the match, before the waiter decided to change the channel (to Fútbol of course) despite the room being mostly empty - my kiddo was pretty upset the rest of the meal. The rest of the service was similar, ok albeit slightly impatient. Something we learned is that this restaurant does things French style (which maybe we should’ve guessed by the name). That’s fine and good, but given we were in Morocco, we kinda wanted Moroccan style.

After finally settling in on our dishes, pictured below the food started to trickle out.

Most of it lacked much flavor. We did enjoy the salad which was fresh and generous. My kiddo enjoyed the tartar. However the fruit de mare and sardines were both meh. Sardines are supposed to be a local specialty, but here they were very underwhelming. While the fruit de mare was not overly fried (this is a positive) it also didn’t have much taste or flavor.

That said, prices were reasonable, maybe the ultimate you get what you pay for? Our meal ended up being about 360 local (including tip), roughly €36.

Look, if you’re looking for a bit of a buttoned up experience and trying to avoid any stomach bugs, this might be your jam. But honestly, you can probably do much better than okay. I know we plan...