Bar du Petit Poucet is the oldest story on Casablanca's drinking map. A plain room on Boulevard Mohammed V, it once sat aviators and boxers at its counter and still pours a cheap beer to anyone who wants the match and the history in one sitting.
The pedigree is the draw. PetitFute records that Saint-Exupery and the boxer Marcel Cerdan kept their habits here, back when the bar served the pilots of the Aeropostale mail line (petitfute.co.uk). The room has outlasted nearly every contemporary, which is its own argument in a city where licensed bars open and close fast.
The bar and the brasserie next door are two separate entities sharing a name. By day, the crowd is out front on the terrace over coffee; by evening, the bar side becomes a proper drinking den, leaning more toward beer and talk than toward food. The kitchen lives in the restaurant next door, so the bar itself is for drinking, not dining.
Order a draught beer, which runs around 16 dirhams and is among the cheaper pours in the Centre-ville, well below the hotel-rooftop tariff. There is no cocktail programme worth chasing here; the value and the room are the point. A simple beer at the counter, with the old photographs on the walls and a match on if one is showing, is the honest order.
The crowd is older and local, a regulars' bar that draws curious visitors for the history as much as the price. It is not a screen-led sports room; on match days the television is a bonus rather than the headline, and the volume stays conversational. Set expectations toward a historic Casablanca bar that happens to show football, not a dedicated sports venue.
Best time to go is late afternoon into early evening, when the terrace is busy and the light is good on Boulevard Mohammed V. Come for the history and a cheap beer first; treat any match on the screen as a happy coincidence rather than the reason to book the night around it.
The setting is pure old Casablanca. Boulevard Mohammed V is the spine of the city's Art Deco centre, lined with 1930s facades, and the Petit Poucet has watched the street change around it for the better part of a century. Made in Medina lists it among the central addresses worth a stop, and the appeal is exactly that continuity: the terrace out front, the worn counter inside, and the sense that the room has kept its own pace while the Corniche and the malls reinvented the rest of the city's nightlife.
The honest caution is that nostalgia carries the place more than service or polish. The bar is plain, the food is next door, and a visitor expecting a full sports-bar setup will find a single screen at most. But for the price of a draught and the company of regulars who have come here for years, it offers something the newer rooms cannot fake, which is a genuine sense of where Casablanca's drinking culture began.
Bar du Petit Poucet suits travellers who like a bar with a past, budget drinkers after the cheapest honest pint downtown, and anyone exploring the old-town architecture who wants a stop with a story. For a proper screen-led night, pair it with Tiger House in Maarif or The Irish Pub in Gauthier. It is one entry in our guide to the best sports bars in Casablanca, part of the wider Casablanca bar guide.
