Bar des Négociants is the kind of room Casablanca keeps for itself. It sits on the corner of Boulevard Mohammed V in the centre-ville, behind a screen of hanging beads, and it has been pouring cheap drinks to a regular crowd since the French Protectorate. There is no menu, no cocktail list and no concession to anyone passing through for the first time.
The setting reads like a slice of preserved history. Boulevard Mohammed V was the spine of French-era Casablanca, lined with the Art Deco facades the city is now slowly restoring, and the bar opened as a smart pavement café in that period. Restaurant Guru and Tripadvisor reviewers tell the same story in plainer words, describing it today as an "ancient French bar with locals" that has "descended into one of the best clochard connoisseur bars, cheapest drinks in town."
The room itself is bare and unbothered. Bead curtains hang across the doorway, a Moroccan touch that blocks the street view and keeps the inside private, which is part of why the bar has lasted in a country where drinking is done discreetly. Inside there are tiled floors, a worn counter and a clientele of older men who have been coming for decades. Newcomers are tolerated rather than courted, and that honesty is the appeal.
Casablanca is the most liberal city in Morocco for a drink, but most of its bars sit inside hotels or behind restaurant doors. Bar des Négociants is the rare standalone, ground-floor, walk-in bar with real history attached, which is why it turns up on local guides to the city's old drinking spots. Restaurant Guru lists it around 223rd of more than 840 pubs and bars in Casablanca, a ranking that undersells its cultural weight and reflects only that it makes no effort to please tourists.
What to order is short. Cold local lager is the house drink, so ask for a Casablanca or a Flag Spéciale, the two Moroccan beers most bars pour, and expect to pay a fraction of what a hotel bar charges for the same bottle. A glass of Moroccan red from the Meknes vineyards is the other reliable pour. There are no cocktails and no food beyond simple snacks, so this is a stop for a drink and the atmosphere, not a meal.
This bar is for travellers who want the real, unpolished Casablanca rather than a rooftop view, and for anyone curious about how the city drank a century ago. It rewards the visitor who can sit quietly, nurse a cold beer and watch a working-class institution go about its day. It is not a date spot or a group night out, and women travelling alone should know it is an old-school, male-dominated room.
Best time to go is late afternoon, when the light comes through the beads and the regulars settle in for the early evening. It is a daytime-into-dusk bar rather than a late-night one, and it suits being paired with a walk along Boulevard Mohammed V to take in the Art Deco architecture before or after a drink. The United Nations Square end of the boulevard, a few minutes on foot, is the natural place to start that walk before the beads part for the first cold beer of the evening.
For more of the city's drinking, see our guide to the best hidden gem bars in Casablanca and the wider Casablanca bar round-up. For two more old-school rooms in the centre, pair it with Bar du Petit Poucet and the Brasserie Marcel Cerdan, both on the full Casablanca bar guide.
