Café Arabe Marrakech | Medina Rooftop Restaurant & Bar

Café Arabe has been running on Rue Mouassine for more than twenty years, which makes it one of the older fixtures of this part of the Medina. The address is 184 Rue Mouassine, a short walk from the Mouassine Mosque and fountain, on lanes where cars do not reach. It is a restaurant, a bar and a rooftop rolled into one riad, and it is also one of the few places this deep in the old city that holds a licence to serve alcohol.

That last point is most of the reason people seek it out. You can sit on a Medina rooftop, look across the flat roofs to the Koutoubia minaret, and have an actual cocktail or a glass of wine while the sun goes down. In a quarter where most places are dry, that combination is rare, and Café Arabe has had two decades to get the setting right.

The Vibe

There are three distinct settings here, and which one you get changes the evening. At ground level there is a patio with orange trees and a retractable roof, so it works whether the weather is warm or cooling off. Inside there is a Moorish salon with a fireplace, the cosy option for a cooler night or a quieter dinner. Up top is the rooftop, fitted with misting fans for the heat, which is the one most people are aiming for and the one with the Koutoubia view.

The decor leans into Majorelle blue and zellige tilework, and the mood after dark is candle-lit and frankly romantic. The crowd is a mix of visitors and well-heeled locals, heavy on couples there for the sunset and dinner. Nobody is here to party. People come to eat well and drink properly in a beautiful old-city setting, with a lounge-leaning playlist kept low enough that you can hold a conversation over it.

The Menu

The kitchen runs two cuisines in parallel, Moroccan and Italian, and you can mix freely across a table. On the Moroccan side you get tagines, with the chicken, preserved lemon and olive version cited as a regular order, plus couscous, briouates and a run of Moroccan pastries. On the Italian side there is pasta, pizza, burrata and octopus or seafood. The crossover is the point: you can open with a Moroccan briouate assortment and follow it with burrata, or share a tagine and a pizza without anyone blinking.

For a sense of the prices, vegetable spring rolls land around 90 MAD, a briouate assortment around 120 MAD and burrata around 160 MAD, with mains and larger plates running roughly 120 to 190 MAD. Those figures come from aggregator listings, not a bill we have checked ourselves, so read them as approximate. The official carte is published as a PDF at cafearabe.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Carte-restaurant.pdf, though menus shift, so take it as a guide.

On the drinks side, the wine list is described as extensive and there is a proper cocktail programme with an on-site bartender who will steer you toward pairings. Beer is served too. We could not find a reliable published price list for cocktails or wine bottles, and one aggregator quoted wine figures so low they read as per-glass or simply unreliable, so we are not going to put a number on it. Ask at the table.

The Music

Music here stays in the background. Expect a hip, lounge-leaning playlist running under the room, pitched to keep the candle-lit mood going without filling a dance floor. There are no live sets or resident DJs as a draw, and that is by design. Café Arabe is a restaurant and bar with a rooftop, so the food and the view do the work and the soundtrack just keeps the evening moving.

Prices & Entry

Treat the figures here as approximate. The food prices come from listings rather than a checked bill, and the drinks prices are not reliably published at all.

• Entry / cover: none found. No entry fee or droit d'entrée turns up anywhere, so entry appears to be free and you pay for food and drinks only.
• Starters: roughly 90 to 160 MAD (from listings, not a checked bill).
• Mains: roughly 120 to 190 MAD (from listings, not a checked bill).
• Cocktails and wine: not reliably published. One source quoted suspiciously low wine figures we do not trust, so ask at the table instead of relying on a number.
• Table / bottle minimum: none mentioned anywhere. This reads as free entry where you simply pay for what you order, but the absence of a minimum is unconfirmed, so ask when you book if it matters.

The honest read: this is mid-to-upper for the Medina, reasonable for what the setting delivers, but priced as a destination rooftop and not the café you drop into on your own street. You are paying for the licence and the view, plus twenty years of getting the room right.

When to Go

Café Arabe opens daily and runs continuous service, so you can land for a late lunch, an afternoon drink or dinner without worrying about a kitchen that closes between sittings. The exact hours vary by source, somewhere in the range of 10:00 or 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM or midnight, and we found no fixed closed day, so confirm the closing time if you are planning a late one.

The window that matters is sunset. The rooftop with the Koutoubia view is the reason most people come, and the hour around sundown is when it earns its reputation, so time your booking accordingly. The indoor salon and the patio are the better calls on a cooler or windier night.

How to Book

Reserve by phone on +212 (0)524 42 97 28, through the online contact form at cafearabe.com/en/contact-us/, or by messaging Instagram at @cafearabemarrakech. The single most important thing: book ahead if you want the rooftop. Reviewers have turned up and been turned away from the terrace without a reservation, ending up on the patio or indoors instead, so if the Koutoubia view is the point of the evening, secure that seat in advance and say so when you book.

If you would rather not chase the booking yourself, or you want the rooftop table held for a particular sunset, that is the kind of arrangement The Marrakech Society handles for members. Apply to join and the concierge can line up the table, the timing and the right setting so you simply turn up.

What to Know

There is no published dress code, but the candle-lit, romantic mood makes smart-casual the natural fit for dinner, especially on the rooftop. You will not be turned away for dressing down. Nobody posts this rule; it is just what the room asks for.

Getting there is a Medina walk. The address is 184 Rue Mouassine, near the Mouassine Mosque and fountain, on lanes that cars cannot enter, so a taxi drops you at the nearest edge and you cover the last stretch on foot. Pin the location before you set off, because the alleys around Mouassine are easy to lose. Two things to close on: book the rooftop ahead if the view is your reason for coming, and lean on the bartender for a pairing, since the drinks are a real part of why this place is worth the walk.

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