MY Kechmara Marrakech | Design Bar-Bistro & Rooftop

MY Kechmara has been a fixture of Guéliz since around 2004, which makes it old by the standards of a district that reinvents its nightlife every couple of seasons. It sits at 3 Rue de la Liberté, in the stretch of the Ville Nouvelle where the art galleries cluster, and it has always been more than one thing at once: a café and bar and bistro on the ground floor, a leafy rooftop terrace above, and a seventies design sensibility running through all of it.

The format is the appeal. You can come for a coffee and a plate at noon, a beer in the late afternoon, dinner in the evening, or a cocktail while a DJ plays into the small hours, all under the same roof. There is a small concept store and the walls double as a rotating art space, so the place reads as a Guéliz cultural haunt as much as a bar. Do not come expecting a panoramic, see-the-whole-city rooftop. What you get instead is a planted, candlelit terrace with a steady local crowd and good food, and the place has been getting that right for two decades.

The Vibe

The look is committed seventies: warm tones, retro fittings, the kind of design that feels lived-in instead of staged for a photo. Downstairs is the all-day café-bar-bistro, the part that turns over from morning coffee to late drinks. Upstairs is the rooftop, planted with foliage and lit with candles in the evening, a small garden on the roof rather than a big terrace selling a skyline view. Cosy is the word for it, and the size works in its favour after dark.

The crowd is cosmopolitan and culture-leaning, the sort of mix you get in the gallery district: locals, regulars, visitors who have been tipped off, people who treat it as a daytime work café and an evening bar in equal measure. The energy is urban and friendly, never loud or exclusive. Add the concept store and the art on the walls and you get a venue that does several jobs without feeling scattered, which is harder than the regulars make it look.

The Menu

The kitchen runs international cooking with reinvented Moroccan dishes, built on fresh local produce, and it covers a lot of ground across the day. Pizza is on the list. So, unusually for Morocco, is bacon, which gives you a sense of how international the carte is willing to go. The official site names plates like kefta briouates around 70 MAD, vegetable briouates around 60 MAD, a Moroccan salad with feta around 90 MAD and a beef burger with mushrooms around 130 MAD. Those are the published figures, so take them as a guide rather than a current receipt, since menu prices move.

The bar is a real part of the offer, not an afterthought. Signature cocktails run about 70 MAD, and the wine list takes in Moroccan, French, Italian and Spanish bottles. There is draft and bottled beer, with draft pours spanning roughly 35 to 110 MAD depending on size, and a litre of sangria reported around 275 MAD. Several sources mention complimentary tapas or a spicy juice shot arriving with your drinks, a small touch that fits the friendly register of the place. To order well, treat it as a bistro with a proper bar: a few plates, a bottle of Moroccan wine or a couple of cocktails, and let the rooftop do the rest.

The Music

Music is part of the evening, not the headline. Resident and guest DJs play several nights a week, and the programming leans toward lounge and a relaxed bar-and-terrace mood, with some sources also flagging live jazz nights. The emphasis varies depending on who you ask, jazz on some listings, DJ sets on others, so the safest read is that it shifts with the night.

This is not a club and the rooftop is not a dancefloor. The sound is built to fill a terrace and keep an evening moving, the kind you can still talk over. If a particular DJ or a jazz night matters to you, check Instagram before you build the evening around it, because live programming drifts and the published detail is thin.

Prices & Entry

Treat these as approximate ranges, not a fixed rate card. The food prices come from the official site; the rest is framing based on the kind of venue this is.

• Entry: none. No entry fee or door charge is listed anywhere, which is what you would expect from a bar-bistro and not a nightclub.
• Starters: roughly 60 to 90 MAD.
• Mains: from around 130 MAD.
• Cocktails: about 70 MAD. Draft beer roughly 35 to 110 MAD by size; a litre of sangria around 275 MAD.

Overall this is a mid-range Guéliz address, rated around €€ to €€€. We have found no published table or bottle minimum, and given the format that tracks, but treat the absence of a minimum as unverified rather than guaranteed. You are paying for what you eat and drink, which keeps an evening flexible: a quick drink with the free tapas costs little, while a full dinner with wine for two climbs into the upper-mid range.

When to Go

The official site shows the venue open every day, roughly 10:00 AM to 2:00 AM, with last orders around 1:15 AM. A happy hour is reported in the early evening, somewhere around 5:00 to 7:30 PM, with one source citing 50 percent off, so it is worth timing a first drink to catch it. Older listings showing shorter Monday-to-Saturday lunch-and-dinner hours look out of date against the current "7/7" line, and we have not seen any recent closure notes, though the exact closed days, if any, stay unverified.

The place changes character through the day, which is its best trick. Daytime is the café-and-work crowd. Late afternoon is the happy-hour and after-work window. Evening brings dinner and the DJ nights, and the rooftop is at its best after dark with the candles lit. For the bar-and-terrace version, aim for the evening; for a quieter visit, the daytime café downstairs is the move.

How to Book

The cleanest way to reserve is the online form on the official rooftop site, mykechmara-rooftop.com. Instagram, at @my_kech_marrakech, is the easiest place to check what is on and send a quick message. An older listing gives a phone number, but we have not confirmed it is still in service, so we would not lead with it. A weekday visit rarely needs much notice; a weekend evening or a rooftop table on a DJ night is worth booking ahead.

If you would rather not handle the back-and-forth, or you want a well-placed table on the terrace on a busy night, this is the kind of small arrangement The Marrakech Society sorts for members. Apply to join and the concierge can line up the booking and the timing, here and across the rest of Guéliz.

What to Know

Dress smart casual. There is no enforced code, and the daytime café is relaxed, but the room makes a small effort in the evening, so dress for a nice dinner rather than a club door. You will be comfortable in something neat.

Getting there is easy. Kechmara is at 3 Rue de la Liberté in Guéliz, the Ville Nouvelle, in the gallery district and central enough to reach by taxi from the medina or the Hivernage hotels. Agree the fare before you set off or have your hotel call a car. Two honest notes to close. A few of the finer details here, the happy-hour split, the live-jazz nights and the older phone line, rest on single or dated sources, so we have flagged rather than stated them. And while everything points to free entry with no minimums, no venue has published that in writing, so confirm when you book if it matters. None of it changes the main point: this is one of the more characterful all-day spots in Guéliz, and the rooftop earns the visit on its own.

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