Bora Bora, Cairo

Bora Bora
Zamalek

Located on the Nile, it has a beautiful ambiance and is a wonderful place to relax in the evenings if you visit before 10-11pm, when the party people come in and take over. Until then it is a serene quiet place to unwind, while watching the Nile and the occasional fellucca glide by.

They do serve alcohol. A large Bacardi (60ml) is 65Le. Pint of Sakkara beer is 20.25Le. Their main course mainly comprise of pastas. We preferred to stick to the Egyptian mezze, forgoing the main course. Soft Drinks are 10Le/can.

The food was some of the best Egyptian food we have had in Cairo, second only to Abu El Sid. All the vegetarian dips - tahina, baba ghannoug and Labna are 10Le. The Labna was especially wonderful - a flavour of cream cheese and cheddar cheese, with the consistency of cheesespread.

The vine leaves - again some of the best I have eaten in a restaurant in Egypt were 20Le. They need to be eaten when fresh and hot, else the fat in the stuffing begins to weigh heavily on the palate.

The Alexandian Liver at 42Le, the Alexandrian Sausage at 28Le and the fried calamari at 49Le were excellent. The texture of calamari was just right as was the seasoning. One of the few times we did not even feel the need to squeeze lemon over the dish.

They do serve shisha for 7LE and charge another 4Le for the disposable pipe that they use. They offer lemon flavour which I have not yet encountered elsewhere and it was quite smooth.

Note : it is advisable to reserve a table as this is quite a popular hangout at nights.

Al Tazaj, Cairo

Al Tazaj
Multiple Locations
Cairo

Common home delivery number 19018

I apprehensively ordered a Roast chicken from Al Tazaj using otlob.com Its the Egyptian franchise of a Saudi chain.

The apprehension was essentially because most commercially cooked roast chickens in Egypt have no added flavoring except heavy doses of salt. And my Indian palate craves flavoring. Not just chilli but any kind of flavoring.

I hit a winner with Al Tazaj. I ordered a Barbecued Chicken Meal Combo from their menu which included 1 whole chicken, served with sesame paste salad + French fries + Pepsi + eish. All this for just 27LE.

I had to wait an hour for the delivery, but it was worth it. The chicken was small (maybe about 750 gms)and hence tender. It was butterflied and marinated in a mix of garlic, lemon, black pepper and a few other herb and spices. The meat was tender and the skin was crisp without being charred. Lovely consistency, lovely taste, amazing flavour. The BEST roast chicken I have eaten in a hotel in Cairo. This is the first time I am eating Egyptian food from a restaurant that I did not add any hot sauce or other sauce too.

Their website states that These tender birds are fed only natural ingredients (our own special feed formula). Then, fresh from the farm they are marinated in a secret blend of fruits and vegetables then grilled to perfection over wood charcoal. The unique, delicious taste of TAZA BarB.Q. is one of a kind! I Agree!

I also ordered a basbousa which came in its individually wrapped box for 4.75LE. It may seem a little pricey for its size, but if my calculations are right, the special nuts they used as topping are more expensive than almonds, pistas or cashewnuts. The flavour was unlike any basbousa I have eaten before. It was a cross between the regular basbousa and an Indian sweet called milk cake (when full cream milk is cooked with sugar till it dries up into little granules) It was topped with those Sudanese (kiri?) nuts.


I'm very happy with this place and know where I'm going to order from the next time, I crave a good barbecued chicken on demand.

They have a delivery charge of about 5Le and of course sales tax of 10%. There is a 17LE minimum charge for delivery.

Abo Yosef Koshary, Cairo

Only silver lining in my Wasted Day today was, I embarked on another food adventure. Walked up to a place called Abou Yoosef. Their menu was in Arabic. Everyone there only spoke arabic. I pointed to 2 items on the menu & patiently awaited opening my mystery suprise package.

One turned out to be a chicken fillet sandwich roll. The other was some local dish.

Now the problem is I have no clue about the name. I do not remember which item I pointed to, so its going to take some time to figure out what we ate.

But let me try & give u a description. (no picture : we were too ravenous after the house hunt that we did not bother with wasting time on taking pictures) the dish is a mix of 4 types of pasta
1. a very short tubular pasta 2mm length
2. a circular spoke pasta 2mm diameter
3. short spaghetti
4. vermicilli
and some arborio rice.

All boiled seperately with just salt & then mixed in almost equal quantities. The dish is then topped with some boiled whole masoor dhal & deep fried browned onions. & a sprinkling of chickpeas (chole)

A tomato based gravy was served on the side to be mixed into the dish. I was wearing a salwar kameez & bindi, so he realisd i was indian. pointed to my bindi & handed me a second packet which turned out to be a spicy chilli mix which we added to the tomato gravy before pouring it into the carbs.

The dish was really yummy & I doubt my description has done it justice. Also its a wonderful vegetarian option for veggies who come to this country & are forced to live on French fries. Next mission is to somehow describe this to a local who can tell me its name.

Edit : My new blogger friends Cairogal & Maryanne tell me that this dish is called "Koshary" & every place that sells this staple food would have the term koshari or koshary in its name. It costs from 3-5LE & is the basic diet of most Egyptians.

Heres a Recipe for Koshary

& heres a picture

Andrea, Cairo

Had dinner at a lovely little restaurant called Andrea today. This was after a very interesting visit to The Lebanese Roastery. Read that account here

Andrea had a Moroccan setting as do most other Coffee Shops cum Restaurants in Cairo. Their signboard, menu cards, napkins all proclaimed that they were a chain that had been operational since 1959. That wasn't what impressed us, we had actually just completed another of our 3 hour walks & had decided to enter the next restaurant that looked halfway decent & order dinner.

Fortunately we werent disappointed. Cute interiors, an English menu and a waiter who could speak Basic English & we were ready to order. They had a couple of local dishes on offer & we decided to try them out.

We had some chicken liver (12LE) to start with as an appetiser which was ok, not very exciting, but the main courses were a bigger success.

I had the Kabab & Kofta (the kabab is like a piece of chicken tikka, the kofta is a much much fatter version of the sheekh kebab) for 29LE.

But dish of the day was hubbys Chicken Fata The recipe in the link before is similar but different from what we had at the restaurant, but I couldn't find any other recipe for this dish online.

What we ate seemed to be a combination of the following things. A mixture of boneless chicken chunks marinated in a tasty spice blend with chickpeas(chole) deep fried pita bread cut up in to small squares All covered with a layer of tahini& garnished with some nuts. It was absolutely briliant, I hope to find an Egyptian recipe book that will give me the exact recipe. This was more than worth its 18LE & extremely extremely filling

Egypt : Fatour Buffet at Arrous El Nil

Arrous El Nil
Cairo Sheraton
Cairo
Around 130 LE (130*8 INR or 130/5.7USD) + Taxes

Decided to take advantage of having arrived in Egypt during Ramadan & indulge in a Fatour buffet. This was the perfect way to experiment with the local cuisine without being stuck with dishes that didn't appeal to my taste buds.

Traditionally the fast is broken with Dates since the Prophet (PBUH) is supposed to have broken his fast with dates. So started with a dish of dried dates soaked in milk. Dates being very high in sugar content, the milk almost tasted like Condensed milk. Very tasty stuff. I would have had much more of this but the rest of the buffets Table(S) beckoned. There were fresh dates, dried dates, dates stewed with apricots which I passed over since I have already tasted this stuff before.

3 varieties of juices : Karkade, Kamar El Din & something else which are good too.

I moved on to the salad & dips section. Wasn't too excited by what I tried, but then I have never been a salad person. Hummus, tomatoes with a Egyptian dressing. Long brinjals sauteed in a local masala. 2-3 varieties of salads with bulghur (broken wheat) 1 spicy, 1 sour, 1 salty where just some of the varieties on display. Since today I was just trying out stuff, I was more concerned with taste than remembering the names or clicking pictures. Will give more detailed food descriptions once I'm more comfortable with the names.

Soups on offer were cream of chicken & beef consomme. These seemed more continental, but there was a dish with the main course with a very thin gravy of green leafy vegetables with chicken pieces in it which was of a soup like consistency. Which was kinda sticky (like okra/bhindi, once it meets with water) The stickiness (I can hear my nana saying "nyoli, nyoli" in Konkani) was a slight deterrent but the dish was reasonably tasty.

The main course had a variety of dishes on offer & I really freaked on these as they were similar in parts to our Indian dishes. A lamb with rice preparation & a veal with some seeds (the seeds when cooked are very like rice in texture) which were similar to Biryani. I loved the lamb with rice, it was high on tomato, but I still liked the taste. A lamb stew with vegetables. Steamed Couscous (like rawa/semolina) with a chickpea (chole) gravy. Roast Beef ribs (this was quite bland) Okra with beef in a tomato gravy. A filo pastry with mince, like a dry lasagna or a multi layered puff. Chesy pasta & another continental dish which I didnt even bother with. Oriental roast chicken (a liitle bland again) & one or 2 other gravies which could be eaten with the couscous or a rice & vermicili/sevaiyan dish (the 2 are just cooked together & served)

There were over 20 varieties of desserts. Cakes, biscuits, a vermiciilli & nut cake, honey soaked cakes, rawa based sweets, fresh fruit salad, bread pudding were just some of the stuff on offer. I gorged myself on them rationalising it to myself as a diwali indulgence & promptly came back to my room to take a nap.

Definitely worth trying out, if you aren't lucky enough to be invited to a locals house to partake of Fatour. Its normally served just past sunset (5:30 in this part of the world) till about 7:00 before the restaurant starts readying itself for Dinner