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Dimly lit and decorated with brass lamps and Oriental paraphernalia, Abu as-Sid serves up Cairo’s most sophisticated Egyptian food. This is home cooking gourmet-style. Specialties include sharkassiyya (chicken breast with walnut sauce) and molokhiyya, a notorious green vegetable soup. At weekends it’s one of Cairo’s more atmospheric drinking spots, crammed with movers and shakers. Unfortunately, while Abu as-Sid offers Egyptian food at its best, it also showcases Egyptian service at its worst—sloppy and slow. It isn’t helped by a management that routinely tries to shift foreigners mid-meal, from the good table they were offered to get them to come in, in order to make space to entice more foreigners through the door. Make reservations, don’t let them move you and be firm with the waiting staff—the food will be worth it.
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Pushing open Estoril’s heavy wooden doors, you enter a cavernous, dimly lit eatery seemingly trapped in the mid- 1950s. The mostly Egyptian menu sticks to grilled meat and standard Middle Eastern mezze, which are decidedly hit-and-miss (avoid, at all costs, the cheese-and-tomato mix). Cheese or spinach sambousek are, however, delicious. Service is apathetic to the point of indifference, but the beer— when it arrives—is cold, the atmosphere inimitable and it inspires an exasperated fondness in its large regular clientele.
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Everyone is confused: when did former US president Jimmy Carter dine at outof- the-way Felfela and why did he leave his autograph? Whatever the reason, it’s a testament to the fact that Felfela seems to please everyone, from tour groups to expats to peckish locals, with its basic, tasty, all-Egyptian cooking. As you eat, birds twitter in aviaries above the tables and fish peer curiously from their aquaria. You may want to avoid the overpriced meat dishes in favour of homestyle lentil soup and the excellent mezze (appetisers). Creme caramel for dessert rounds off a fun, reasonably-priced dining experience. Felfela Express, just around the corner on Talaat Harb Street, serves up the best koshari-bishwarma (traditional Egyptian pasta dish topped with rotisserie chicken or beef ) in town.
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Formerly Andrea’s, the recently renovated Sequoia’s is Zamalek’s new chic riverside hotspot. Daytime restaurant-goers can relax under the canopied tables watching the Nile flow towards the Mediterranean. In the evenings (summer especially) the place gets a bit more lively. The fare is standard Egyptian with mezzes and shish kebabs of fairly ho-hum quality. The real head-turners are the futuristic after dinner shishas (the ubiquitous Egyptian water pipes), which occupy a hazy territory somewhere between absurd and cool.
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