Something that even you have never seen. After 36 years the current owner is finally tossing in his hand, as all restaurant owners do in the end. And Casablanca goes back much farther than that. I fell in love with Casablanca not long after I moved to Boston in The Brattle and Casablanca are all tangled up together in an old barn-like building on Brattle Street, on the edge of Harvard Square.
Sometime in the sixties, a mythic event occurred in Harvard Square. That tangled Boston weave of colleges, history, books, brains, ambition, nostalgia, ego, Irish drinking, sports mania, and reckless aggressive driving felt like a double-helix match for my DNA in a way that Portland, Oregon god bless it! It surprised me at the time. I was 37 and it had taken me a long time to find the place. The back room โ the bar โ at Casablanca is a large square room, probably 15 paces long, with old bladed fans under the high ceiling and a dark wood bar that runs down the room and turns left.
As you enter from the alley, next to the Brattle, you pass two wicker loveseats, with the wicker extending up over the top of the seat like the canopy of an old English horse carriage. These are prime date seating for Harvard kids. Beyond them is the half-open kitchen, with a wide food counter and a view of the chefs at work.
A short wall and narrow countertop separates the bar area from two-top and four-top tables down the right side of the room, along that crazy mural. On the back wall, under the high windows, is a row of small banquette tables. The menu is Mediterranean: olives, chicken, lamb, eggplant, stuffed grape leaves, nuts. The cocktail list runs to gimlets and daiquiris, and there has always been an unusually good by-the-glass red wine list. For better and worse, of course.
I moved to Belmont, and Casablanca was an easy ride on the 73 bus, down Mt. Auburn street into the Harvard Square transit center, up the south stairs, turn right and paces across the brick sidewalk. Or, if you were up for it, skip the bus for a long icy-cold walk in the winter gloaming.
