You must remember this: A cafe is still a cafe
CASABLANCA, Morocco — Some things get better as time goes by. Rick’s Cafe may be one of them.
Chris Kelley of Bath, England, stopped there one recent day for lunch on his way to a kite-surfing vacation in southern Morocco and said he was impressed at how lovingly restored the old place was. It was just like the one in the movie “Casablanca.”
Like many visitors here, Kelley was surprised to learn that Rick’s Cafe Américain never existed, except on a Hollywood movie lot, where the classic film starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman was made.
It was 1942, the world was at war and the eponymous city was occupied by the Axis powers. Rick’s was just the figment of a writer’s imagination.
The owner and founder of the real Rick’s Cafe is a former U.S, diplomat, Kathy Kriger.
“We wanted to make it everything it was in the movie, and then some,” she said.
A dozen white arches supported by columns frame the main dining room, under a three-story, octagonal cupola, and green leather bumpers grace the curved bar top. Palms in the corners, hanging brass chandeliers, beaded table lamps and a baby grand piano tucked into an archway lend to the period-authentic mise-en-scène.
Meet Madame Rick
Not coincidentally, Kriger on most nights can be found standing at the corner of the bar, the waiters under instructions to refill her wineglass with water until 11 p.m., when a Moroccan Val d’Argan Blanc is allowed. A lot of the regulars call her “Madame Rick.”
The incarnation of Rick’s Cafe has nothing to do with World War II, but a lot to do with the modernday war on terrorism, and Kriger’s own small role in it. It also has much to say about the enduring power of a great work of art to affect destinies in real life.
Like a lot of Americans, Kriger was a fan of “Casablanca,” which often makes critics’ lists of the 10 greatest movies of all time. She first saw it in 1974 in Portland, Ore.
“At the end, everyone stood up and applauded,” she said.
Kriger later joined the State Department, which posted her as a commercial attaché to this Atlantic coastal port, Morocco’s business center and biggest city.
She was stunned to discover there was no Rick’s Cafe here, which seemed to her a missed marketing opportunity.
Then came the Sept. 11 attacks, and what she considered a backlash in U.S. against Muslims. She wanted to fight that backlash.
She decided that a good way would be to show that an American woman, operating alone in a Muslim society, could start a business like Rick’s Cafe, to act as an exemplar of tolerance, a refuge in a troubled world.
Kriger cashed in her 401(k) plan and found a wreck of an old stately home in the Ancienne Medina, the old city of Casablanca, which was then and is still a shabby, litterstrewn place.
The house did not look like much, but it faced the port, had two royal palm trees flanking its front door, and inside was an architectural gem in the rough.
She went to a Moroccan bank for a loan. The loan wasn’t enough, so Kriger began emailing friends in the States with a pitch that began something like: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, this is the one.”
Play it again, Issam
Kriger was interviewing Moroccan candidates for a manager when she met Issam Chabaa. He mentioned he could play the piano. “I asked him to show me, and he sat down and played ‘As Time Goes By,’” Kriger said. “He was hired.”
He has been with her since the opening 14 years ago.
Chabaa still plays jazz piano several nights a week, as well as managing the club’s 60 employees. Hardly a week goes by without some diner asking him to “Play it again, Issam.”
Chabaa does play “that song” a lot, but when customers say, “Play it again, Sam,” he corrects them: “My name is Issam.”
Kriger, 72, said she planned to spend the rest of her days in Rick’s Cafe, holding up her corner of the bar when she is not mingling with customers. Or as Bogart’s character, Rick Blaine, put it in the movie: “I’m going to die in Casablanca. It’s a good place for it.”