Casablanca Is the Ypsilanti Stop You Keep Driving Past

Washtenaw Avenue between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti is a corridor of strip malls, car dealerships, and chain restaurants that does not invite lingering. You drive it to get somewhere else. Casablanca sits in one of those strip malls at 2333 Washtenaw, and from the outside it looks like every other storefront on the block: a sign, a door, a parking lot. Walk in, and the disconnect between the setting and the food is immediate.

Casablanca's kitchen cooks Moroccan and broader Mediterranean food with a seriousness that the location does not telegraph.^{1Casablanca's menu and cuisine per the restaurant's own description and Ypsilanti dining coverage.} Lamb tagine with preserved lemon arrives in a ceramic dish, the meat slow-cooked until it gives way to a fork, the sauce layered with aromatics that take time to build: saffron, ginger, cinnamon, olives, and the sharp salt of the preserved lemon cutting through the richness. This is not a dish that can be rushed, and the kitchen does not rush it.

The Food

The lamb tagine is the order. A tagine is not a stew, though it resembles one. The cooking vessel, a conical clay pot, traps steam and returns it to the dish, braising the meat in its own moisture. The result at Casablanca is lamb that has absorbed the sauce rather than swimming in it. Preserved lemon, a cornerstone of Moroccan cooking, provides an acid brightness that keeps the dish from tipping into heaviness. At around $16, this is the kind of plate that makes you rethink what a strip mall restaurant can do.^{2Prices approximate as of fall 2025, based on menu observations.}

Couscous is handmade, and you can tell. The grains are fine, separate, and steamed rather than boiled, which gives them a lightness that boxed couscous cannot replicate. A couscous plate with vegetables or meat is a full meal and one of the kitchen's quieter accomplishments.^{3Handmade couscous is steamed in a couscoussier, a two-tiered pot that steams the grain over simmering broth. The technique produces a lighter, more separate grain than the instant couscous common in most American restaurants.}

Merguez sausage has proper snap and spice: lamb, harissa, cumin, and enough fat to keep the casing taut when it hits the grill. Order it as a plate with salad and bread, or alongside the hummus and baba ghanoush for a spread that covers the table. The hummus is smooth and thick, made in-house, and the baba ghanoush has the smokiness that comes from charring eggplant over an open flame.

Falafel is crisp and well-seasoned. Shawarma plates compete with the Ann Arbor options on East Liberty and hold up. Lamb shawarma over rice with garlic sauce is a $13 plate that feeds like $20, a ratio the strip mall location helps make possible.

The Room

The dining room is small, clean, and personal. Maybe a dozen tables, warm lighting, and walls with Moroccan-influenced decor. The space does not try to transport you anywhere. It functions as a neighborhood restaurant dining room, which is what it is. Service is attentive in the way that small, owner-operated restaurants can be: your water gets refilled, your tagine arrives at the right moment, and someone checks in without hovering.

On a Friday evening, the room fills. Reservations are not formally taken, but calling ahead to check wait times is a reasonable move on weekends.

The Washtenaw Corridor

Ypsilanti's restaurant strengths are concentrated in Depot Town and along Michigan Avenue. Casablanca sits outside those clusters, on a stretch of Washtenaw that most diners pass through on their way to somewhere else. Metro Times has called it Michigan's only Moroccan restaurant, and the claim holds up: the tagine, the handmade couscous, and the merguez point to a kitchen working in a tradition that nobody else in the region is seriously pursuing.^{4Metro Times' characterization of Casablanca as Michigan's only Moroccan restaurant, as referenced in local dining guides.}

For Ann Arbor residents, Casablanca is a ten-minute drive east on Washtenaw. For Ypsilanti residents, it is already in the neighborhood. Either way, the distance between the parking lot and the lamb tagine is about thirty seconds, and the return on that investment is one of the better meals available between the two cities.

The strip mall does not promise much. The tagine delivers.

Casablanca is at 2333 Washtenaw Ave, Ypsilanti. Open for lunch and dinner. Seating is first-come, first-served. Cash and card accepted.