Petanque Social Club

Pétanque Social Club is, first and above all, a garden. Hidden behind the crumbling Art Deco facade of the Ciné-Palace in Gueliz, reached through a jasmine-scented passageway, it opens into a sprawling courtyard shaded by olive trees and strung with wicker lanterns and candlelight. The original pétanque court from the 1930s is still there, boules ready for a game after lunch, and the terraces spread outward beneath the tree canopy with the unhurried feel of a place that has been gathering people for nearly a century. Kamal Laftimi, the restaurateur behind Nomad, Café des Épices, and Le Jardin, spent three years restoring the site with designers DiegoandAlexeja, who recycled nearly everything they found: shutters became dining trays, windows were rotated for new angles of light, and photographs of 1930s club members discovered in a safe now line the walls. The interiors reward a wander, from terrazzo floors and La Mamounia vintage chairs to a mural by Yassine Balbzioui splashed across the old butchery, and a library curated by Mondo Galeria with photography books, French literature, and Islamic poetry. But the gravity of the place pulls you back outside, to the garden, where most of the eating and drinking and lingering happens. The kitchen filters local Moroccan produce through a Mediterranean lens: grilled octopus with peppers and chickpeas, pasta al forno verde with goat's cheese and wild greens, bruschetta topped with merguez and aioli, roasted cauliflower that rarely leaves the menu. The cocktail programme, developed with Soulshakers, favours local ingredients, with the Sahara Spritz blending desert rose, saffron, and Campari. By evening the garden fills with the city's creative crowd, and it stays that way well past midnight.