Diners relax at Harvard Square’s Casablanca restaurant under a mural by Somerville’s David Omar White. (Photo: Prehensile Eye)

Whoa — Casablanca, the 56-year-old Harvard Square dining institution, is for sale, reports Porter Square resident Lisa van der Pool at the Boston Business Journal.

“A slow economy has played a role, of course, but Casablanca and other independent spots have suffered a hard time in the tony Cambridge, Mass., retail district surrounding Harvard University ever since big-name stores began pushing up rents, and crowding out some of the smaller players,” ven der Pool writes.

Here’s what’s online from the Journal. Here’s a profile of the restaurant posted by Cambridge Day last year. Among the memories was its opening “as a private club favored by Harvard undergraduates, academics, local writers and politicians.”

Cambridge resident Paula Cronin remembers going on dates to Club Casablanca while an undergraduate at Radcliffe in the late 1950s. “You could only go with a man who had a membership card. Thankfully, the cards were easy to come by,” she said.