Gran Café Central - Tangier

Knew, that was a good place when we found our beekeeper here at breakfast. Great place for tourists and locals, reasonable prices and well appreciated. I especially loved my Baghrir Amlou, the kind of pancake with sweet/savory nut sauce.

The current Gran Café Central is nothing like the original Café Central (founded in 1813). For several decades, starting in the 1940s until the Moroccanization in 1973, [Gran] Café Central was above all a bar and cafe where you can enjoy a glass of wine, a beer, tea or coffee and sit outside at Parisian round table and chairs. Before the location was sold to the current owner, who renovated the old café in the middle of the 1980s, it had deteriorated into a slightly down, dark café with mostly older Moroccan men, who smoke kif pipes inside and have a mint tea or coffee. The Gran Café Central is very modernized and has a long outdoor canopy and a pleasant outdoor seating area with comfortable padded chairs and several tables with large side and maroon umbrellas. The Gran Café Central serves food: breakfast, lunch and dinner including omelette, tajines, fish, salads, hamburgers, deserts, freshly squeezed orange juice, smoothies and other items in its extensive and affordable menu. I enjoy a coffee and often arrange a cheese omelet with a small salad garnish, olives and warm bread. The café restaurant offers a view of the Petit Socco (also called Place Souk Dakhel), and it is ideal for a rendezvous with friends, watching people or simply relaxing. While sitting in Gran Café Central, you can meet or watch tourists from all over the world, day trips from Spain, often sitting in tangents during their visits, and expatriate residents. At different times I met tourists from places like Moldova, Bulgaria, Armenia and Uruguay. Before the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020, the popular FRS Ferry had about six daily boats each day from Tarifa, Spain, you to Port de Tanger Ville in less than an hour. From the port it was possible to walk to the Medina (or a taxi at the port) and enjoy a tea, coffee or some food at Gran Café Central or elsewhere, do some shopping for souvenirs and explore the city before returning to Spain on the ferry. After more than two years without ferry and the border to Spain closed to the sea passenger transport, the FRS Ferry boats finally again service to and from Tarifa, Spain and Tangier, Morocco on 13. April 2022. Gran Café Central is more clean and upscale than the other nearby hunts such as Café Tingis, Fuentes, Café Tanger and Café Al Manara. You can sit outside at tables under the awnings or square parasols or sit inside. Most chairs are padded and comfortable. Gran Café Central has a delicious complete breakfast, or you can order a tajine, smoothie, freshly squeezed orange juice or other fruit juice, coffee, cappuccino, black tea, mint tea or herbal tea, among others on the menu that contains ice creams, cakes, oreo cookies and even Bretzels from Austria. If you are looking for a bit more authentic Tanger Café history and experience, I would go to the Gran Café de Paris at Place de France or to the Outdoor Multi-Terraced Café Hafa on the Marshan, which has direct sea views, with Spain in the distance over the narrow street of Gibraltar. Gran Café Central is a convenient place to eat or meet friends before or after visiting the Tangier American Legation Museum (TALIM). This historic property gift from Sultan Moulay Suliman to the United States of America in 1821 – is the oldest American diplomatic property in the world, and the only property on foreign land listed in the National Register of Historical Places. After further renovations, the Gran Café Central reopened in July 2021 and there are now more comfortable and colorful deck chairs. No credit cards are accepted, but the attractive place has strong Wi-Fi and clean and modern toilets inside, two very large flat screen televisions with high-quality speakers, and there are two aquariums, one at each end, with incredibly large fish. Gran Café Central is open during the day in the month of Ramadan, so that tourists and non-Moslems can eat or drink something because most of the other cafés in Tangier are closed.

Located in the old town. This is an emblematic café. Moroccan tea with herbs and jasmine flowers one of the best in Tangier. Unlike the tea in the modern cafes that like the French say, jus de chaussettes

Good food, good price, nice area, service too good. Nothing to complain

They serve nice food for breakfast, nice drinks and it's a very cool place to chill& hang out and you can never get bored watching what's going on in the street, haha.