Of All The Gin Joints In All The World…

Image from Los Angeles Citysipper.com

Last week on a cool, California summer evening at Malibu Winery, beneath a blanket of stars and over a couple of bottles of sauvignon blanc, my friends and I brought one of our favorite travel experiences full-circle: we watched Casablanca.

With sound.

You see, in January of 2009 we watched Casablanca together, too.  At Rick’s Cafe – IN Casablanca.  But nestled in the famous establishment’s comfy upstairs bar couches, you must deign to watch the classic film on mute, the better to hear the nightly band playing below.  So for my pal Bob, who had never seen the film before EVER (I know…awful, right?), it was an especially unfulfilling experience.  Despite the unbelieveable location and incredible surroundings, we couldn’t hear Humphrey Bogart’s unmistakably deep voice, or that annoying way he says “world” like “woild.”  The version with sound did not disappoint.  What’s more it brought us all back to the chilly January evening we spent in that Moroccan bar having an incredible meal and toasting to the unmistakable sounds of a 1930s Pleyel piano.

Casablanca fell at the end of a long, wonderful trip itinerary through old-world Morocco, so I was only mildly looking forward to the seaside metropolis in the same way you might look forward to getting punched in the face after walking out of yoga class.  It was jarring and uncalled for.  We spent a day languishing about the city, slogging nervously through questionable areas of town on our way to the mosque and haggling wearily in the medina, a facial-twitch-inducing experience only mitigated by gallons of strong mint tea.  By 6pm we were practically banging down the doors of the only establishment tourist trap we really wanted to see in the city: Rick’s.

Opened in 2004, Rick’s Café is akin to a Disney set – deliberate and polished and obviously unoriginal – the type of thing you pretentiously scoff at when speaking about it to others but are helplessly bewitched by once you enter.   As soon as we opened the creaky wooden door and pushed past thick folds of dense green velvet drapery it was as if the grime and noise of modern Casablanca was swept completely away, leaving in its wake a cavern of white walls, burnished brass lanterns and swaying palm fronds.  Part hotel lobby, part swanky lounge, part 4-star dining room, Rick’s appearance does not hope to fool you into believing it is anything other than what it was built as: a cookie-cutter imitation of the American film version.  It even has the Disney-style grossly elevated price tags.

The Dining Room

The Screening Room

Maybe it was the wine but more likely the jazz that finally swept us all out of our narcissistic judgemental comas and into joyful abandonment.  Fez-topped waiters bustle across the intricately hand-tiled terra cotta floor, sizzling steaks whiz past on linen-covered trays, champagne corks pop unabashedly from the back bar and Euro-chic couples huddle over carved wooden cocktail tables puffing on cigarettes and ignoring everything but the wispy curls of smoke swirling slowly upward.  It is in some ways a blaring scene of epicurean delight, of music and noise and haze with all the scents and sounds you might expect from an exotic restaurant.  It is in others merely another establishment where the wine flows freely as long as you’re willing to pay for it and when you remember you’re in North Africa you find it all much more magical than if you were in a pizza parlor in Albany.

And so in the cozy comfort of a whitewashed alcove, shards of gold light from the stencil-cut Moroccan lanterns bouncing above us, we savored falling-apart-tender lamb chops, a juicy and robust filet mignon, medleys of fresh, al dente Moroccan vegetables spiced to perfection and Rick’s signature dessert – a fluffy cheesecake which, after 2 weeks of almond cookies, was like diving headlong into a pile of raspberry coulis-drenched chiffon.  The rest of the menu reads like a mashup of gourmet European cuisine with trademark southern Mediterranean influences: local fish spiced with thyme and crushed black pepper, sides of figs and fresh cheeses, bowls of seasonally-appropriate tajine and, for the Yankee in all of us, a classic hamburger.

But perhaps when American diplomat-cum-restauranteur Kathy Kriger (who, by the way, runs a mini-blog off the restaurant’s website) decided to turn a sea-battered building at the edge of Casablanca’s debatably charming medina into a mecca for international cinematic lore-seekers, she didn’t just mean to re-create the gin joint experience, but also bring you back to that nostalgia for the days when people really did lounge about in beaded dresses chain-smoking, gambling and fiercely singing the French national anthem.  Kathy flits about the restaurant nightly, ever the social butterfly, checking on orders and sweet-talking customers, one eye fixed firmly on her domain in the deep-rooted way an ex-politican can never truly be free of.

And then there’s the piano.  Buried deep in the back of the building, a high marbled bar and mirrored shelves piled high with international liquor brands serve as the backdrop for the real scene: a nightly group of musicians led by charming pianist Issam (pronounced, “I, Sam”…yes, really) Chabaa stream 40s hits better than an all-request jukebox, with the infamous “As Time Goes By” it’s crowning moment.  It is almost too staged, this recreation of the old “play it again, Sam” scene, a doe-eyed Ingrid Bergman leaning suggestively over the piano.  But as soon as the familiar strains fill the room you are caught hook, line and sinker – melty and softened like a chocolate bar left on the stove.  But giving in is half the fun.

And in the end as the doors of Rick’s closed behind us, and a humbling evening of caving unabashedly into Morocco’s touristy underbelly (and loving every second of it), we were better people for it.  Stuffed and happy and piled into the back of an absurd little Fiat taxicab we felt we’d seen all of Casablanca we needed to see.

We just hadn’t heard it yet.

So thank you, Malibu Family Wines, for bringing us back to that winter night on the other side of the globe, when our world got just a little bit smaller and our hearts (ok, and our stomachs) a little bigger.

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