Visit #1 ·
★★★★★Stumbled into Kasbah more out of necessity than intention — I'd been walking the medina for three hours and my feet made the decision before my brain did. The place sits right at Bab Boujloud, that famous blue gate, so you'd think it's a tourist trap. Maybe it is. But I was hungry enough not to care about that argument.
Ordered a spread of what they brought out — harira, a tagine I think was lamb with prunes and almonds, some kefta skewers, and bread that came before I asked. The harira was the real thing. Thick, properly sour from the lemon, with that slight tomato funk that cheap versions skip. Someone back there knows the recipe and hasn't shortcut it for foreign palates. I've had harira in Casablanca that tasted like tomato soup with chickpeas thrown in. This wasn't that.
The tagine was sweeter than I prefer — the prune-to-meat ratio was doing a lot of heavy lifting — but the lamb was genuinely tender and hadn't been sitting. The kefta had good spice but got dry fast, which tells me it came off the grill a few minutes before it reached me.
Service was attentive without being pushy, which I appreciated. The terrace view onto the square is loud and busy but that's the point. You're not eating in a quiet room, you're eating inside the chaos of the medina.
This is visit one, so I'm not drawing any conclusions yet. First visits only tell you potential. What I want to know is whether the harira hits the same on a Tuesday afternoon with no big lunch rush. That's the real test. I'll be back — probably twice more — before I decide what this place actually is.
Receipt is in the folder. Total came to a few dollars' worth of dirhams. Didn't track the exact conversion.