Gauthier, Casablanca: the walkable quarter where the city goes out

Gauthier announces itself in small, practical pleasures: a shaded pavement, a table set out under warm light, the smell of pizza dough or garlic prawns drifting from a doorway on Rue Jean Jaurès. In a city that often makes you cross distance by car, this little central rectangle lets you do something almost rebellious for Casablanca — walk from dinner to drinks without surrendering to traffic. By early evening, the terraces begin to fill, the chatter rises, and the district settles into the easy, cosmopolitan rhythm that locals call the bobo quarter with more affection than irony.

What Gauthier is known for

Gauthier is Casablanca in its going-out clothes. The neighbourhood sits in a tight grid bounded by Boulevard d'Anfa, Boulevard Moulay Youssef, Boulevard Mohamed Zerktouni and the Parc de la Ligue Arabe, with the Twin Center towers marking its southern edge and the park softening its eastern side. Within that compact frame, Casablanca compresses its appetite: bistros, terraces, wine bars, rooftops, specialty coffee counters, galleries and boutiques, all close enough that the whole district feels like one long evening plan.

The streets off Rue Jean Jaurès, Rue Montesquieu and Rue Alexandre Dumas are the district’s real stage. They are narrow and shaded, lined with low 1930s buildings, and they carry the sort of everyday elegance Casablanca does best: Art Deco geometry, a little patina, a fashion boutique beside a gallery, a coffee bar wedged between trattorias. It is a neighbourhood that reads modern rather than nostalgic. There is no medina bustle here, no souk theatre, no monument to orbit around. Instead there is the daily ritual of sitting down, ordering something good, and staying a little longer than planned.

What gives Gauthier a particular charge is that so much of it is licensed. In a city where many restaurants are dry, this matters. It explains why the area’s after-dark life clusters here, why the terraces stay busy, why the mood shifts from lunch-time calm to a proper hum after nine. You hear scooters, café chatter, glasses meeting tables, and, from time to time, music drifting out into the street. It is the most walkable slice of central Casablanca, and one of the few places where the city’s social life feels fully visible in the open air.

The cultural anchor is the Villa des Arts de Casablanca, a white 1930s Art Deco villa set in its own gardens near the Parc de la Ligue Arabe. Run by the Fondation ONA as a free contemporary-art space, it stages rotating exhibitions, talks and occasional concerts. Even before you step inside, the villa’s clean lines and garden setting make a gentle argument for the district: Gauthier may be the city’s dining quarter, but it has a serious, cultivated side too.

Where to eat & drink

This is the reason to come, and the reason many people stay in the neighbourhood rather than merely visiting it for dinner. Gauthier’s restaurants are close enough together that you can build a whole evening on foot, moving from one table to another as the light changes.

Le Petit Italien is one of the neighbourhood fixtures, a place for traditional Neapolitan pizza built on imported ingredients — Mutti tomato and creamy burrata — near Boulevard Hassan Souktani. It is the kind of pizzeria that doesn’t need to shout about itself; it simply keeps serving the thing it does best, and the room fills because people know exactly what they are getting.

A short walk away on Rue Jean Jaurès, La Buona Forchetta is a tiny trattoria opposite the Italian consulate, and its appeal lies in the same restraint. Honest pizza, honest pasta, no fuss. The room is small, the mood unpretentious, and the street outside does the rest. That stretch of Jean Jaurès has the feeling of a block that understands its own appetite.

Casa Jose Gauthier, at 22 Rue Jean Jaurès, shifts the mood south and west to Spain. The menu leans heavily Spanish, and that is part of the charm: garlic prawns, grilled sardines and paella, with a loyal following that comes for fish-forward cooking and stays for the terrace energy. It is one of those places that seems built for long lunches that turn into late afternoons.

Niya is different again — Casablanca’s original vegan restaurant-café, opened in 2021 by cultural producer Chama Tahiri. Inside, it feels book-lined and softly lived-in, with orange leather sofas and the kind of creative plant-based cooking that has helped broaden what dining out in Casablanca can mean. Miso-dressed summer kale salads, a saffron-cauliflower “low-carb paella,” specialty coffee and plant-milk drinks: Niya is one of the neighbourhood’s clearest signs that Gauthier is not just about abundance, but about taste with a point of view.

For coffee, Bondi Coffee Kitchen on Rue Sebou is the district’s Australian-style counterpoint, serving some of the best flat whites in the city alongside an all-day healthy menu. It opens daily from 9am to 9pm, which tells you a lot about the neighbourhood’s rhythm: late breakfast, long lunch, early dinner, and another coffee if the evening stretches out.

Le Kimmy'z, at 7 Rue Najib Mahfoud, is one of the places that best captures Gauthier’s hybrid temperament. By day and early evening it is a French bistro, with market-fresh produce, good steaks and lunch set menus. Later, it turns into a lively bar with live bands and DJs, and the transition feels entirely natural here. The neighbourhood likes its boundaries porous — lunch into drinks, dinner into music, coffee into conversation.

Going out

Gauthier is central Casablanca’s after-dark heart not because it is loud, but because it is easy. You can move through it on foot. You can choose the mood you want: a terrace, a rooftop, a bar with a band, a lounge with a skyline view. The district’s nightlife is less about spectacle than about accumulation — one drink becomes two, one dinner becomes a longer night.

Le Kimmy'z is the clearest example. On Wednesdays and Saturdays, the resident band El Mundo plays; afterward, a DJ takes over, and the crowd tends to be friendly and mixed, with the room running late, often to around 3am. It is a good barometer of the neighbourhood’s no-dress-code energy, the kind of place where the night gathers itself without ever becoming precious.

For a rooftop, Bliss Rooftop at the Radisson Hotel Casablanca Gauthier La Citadelle on Boulevard Brahim Roudani is the district’s polished answer. It is a pool-side terrace bar with panoramic city views, signature cocktails and a resident DJ from 4pm, open daily until midnight. The appeal is straightforward and strong: skyline, drink, breeze, the city spread out below in a geometry of lights.

Beyond those anchor addresses, the honest way to enjoy Gauthier is to wander Rue Jean Jaurès and the cross-streets and choose a terrace by instinct. The quarter is dense with smaller bars and lounges that open and close season to season, and that fleeting quality is part of the fun. If you want a bigger club night, Casablancais often head out to the corniche at Aïn Diab, but Gauthier is where the evening begins, and often where it is enough.

Things to do

The signature activity here is almost disappointingly simple, which is why it suits the neighbourhood so well: terrace-hopping on foot. Gauthier is a district that rewards the unhurried walker, the person who is content to notice a facade, stop for coffee, then drift a few blocks for something else.

The essential cultural stop is the Villa des Arts de Casablanca, the white 1930s Art Deco villa on the eastern edge near the Parc de la Ligue Arabe. Entry is free, and the programme changes regularly: contemporary Moroccan and international artists, visual arts, photography, film, talks, occasional concerts. It is one of those places that quietly broadens the shape of a neighbourhood, reminding you that Gauthier is not only a place to eat well, but a place with cultural ambition.

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Gauthier is also a natural starting point for an Art Deco walk. Casablanca has one of the densest concentrations of 1920s and 1930s Art Deco architecture anywhere, and from here you can stroll south-west toward the centre ville to see geometric facades, wrought-iron balconies and old cinema fronts. The district itself gives you a preview of that urban language, in the low-rise buildings and their measured lines. Casablanca’s architecture is often best understood at walking pace, when the details reveal themselves one block at a time.

On the doorstep is the Parc de la Ligue Arabe, the city’s largest and most central green space, with palm-lined promenades that make an easy daytime break between meals. It is not a dramatic park; it is a useful one, which in Casablanca is its own virtue. And when you want the big-ticket sights, the Hassan II Mosque and the old medina are only a short taxi ride away.

Shopping & markets

Gauthier’s shopping is less about destination retail than about the pleasure of browsing between meals. The streets off Rue Jean Jaurès, Rue Montesquieu and Rue Alexandre Dumas are the best place to do it. Here, independent fashion boutiques sit beside art galleries, bookshops, music and electronics stores, and homeware shops, all of them small enough that a block can hold several different moods at once. It is the kind of quarter where you can drift from a gallery to a concept-store feel to a coffee counter without ever losing the street.

The appeal is not scale but texture. A shopping trip in Gauthier is really a walk with interruptions: look in a window, step inside a boutique, cross the street for coffee, return to the pavement. It suits the neighbourhood’s broader character, which is to say it suits people who like cities to feel lived in rather than packaged.

The bigger retail option is the Twin Center, right on Gauthier’s southern edge at the Boulevard Zerktouni corner, with a mall of international brands at the base of the towers. If you want a more conventional department-store-and-cinema experience, Morocco Mall and Anfa Place are a short taxi ride west toward the corniche. But the more memorable shopping here is the small-scale kind, where you can be entirely between errands and never feel rushed.

Where to stay in Gauthier

Gauthier makes one of the best central bases in Casablanca if your trip is about eating, drinking and walking rather than beaches or monuments. The neighbourhood’s hotels sit close to the action, which means you can step out for dinner, a wine bar or a rooftop without thinking about transport. That convenience is the point.

The headline address is the Radisson Hotel Casablanca Gauthier La Citadelle on Boulevard Brahim Roudani, a modern 133-room four-star and Morocco’s first Radisson-branded hotel. It comes with the Bliss rooftop pool-bar and skyline views, which makes it a particularly neat fit for this quarter: practical, polished, and right in the thick of things.

Art Palace Suites & Spa, on Rue du Soldat Maurice Benhammou off Boulevard d'Anfa, goes in a more design-led direction. It has 25 suites, each themed around a historical figure, plus a Moroccan hammam spa and an indoor pool. Boutique Hotel Gauthier offers a more affordable entry point while keeping you in the same walkable orbit, with a sun terrace and lounge.

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Across the board, this is a mid-range-to-upmarket area rather than a budget one. Gauthier trades on location and atmosphere, and it knows it. If you want to wake up in a neighbourhood where the city’s densest restaurant-and-bar scene is already outside your door, this is the central address to choose.

Getting around

Gauthier is one of the rare Casablanca districts you can genuinely explore on foot. That is not a decorative claim; it is the neighbourhood’s defining practical advantage. The whole eating-and-drinking rectangle is compact, and the pleasure of staying here is that you can move through it without negotiating the city’s usual dependence on cars.

For anything beyond the quarter, the Casa Tramway is the simplest public option. The network runs a flat fare of about 8 dirhams a journey, with a change between lines included, and the busy Place des Nations Unies interchange on the edge of the centre ville is a short walk or hop south. From there, you can connect more easily to the old medina, the port and the wider city.

Taxis remain the default for most visitors. The small red petits taxis are cheap, metered and everywhere, and ride apps operate too. From Gauthier, the Hassan II Mosque and the old medina are roughly a 10-minute taxi north; the Corniche and Aïn Diab beach clubs about 10 to 15 minutes west; and Casablanca Mohammed V International Airport around 30 to 40 minutes south by car, or reachable by the direct airport train from Casa-Voyageurs station, itself a short taxi ride away.

In practice, that means Gauthier works best as a walkable base with cheap, easy connections around it. You walk the quarter. You taxi when the city opens out. And you come back in time for one more terrace, because here, that is usually the point.