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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 23 - 29 March 2000 Issue No. 474
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Focus Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Fishing for compliments
By Peter SnowdonWhat do you want from a fish restaurant? Well, you want: 1. a sunlit room painted in simple, direct shades of blue and white; 2. if possible, a view of water through the window, rippling attractively in the afternoon light; 3. tiled floors, simple yet stylish wooden tables, and discreet yet attentive waiters dressed up to look like extras in a Fire Island-kitsch reprise of On the Town.
Oh, yes: and 4. you want fish. Good fish, if possible. Fish that look on your having come here as their last opportunity to impress before departing, fully-certificated, into the next life. Fish that won't hold anything back.
The Sea Market at the Conrad International scores highly on counts 1, 2 and 3. It occupies a large airy room. The decor is tastefully neutral -- high-end international-department-store anonymous. The chairs are comfortable, the tables large, and thankfully uncluttered. The staff, meanwhile, look very pretty in their sailor boy tunics and deep blue pinnies.
The problem is the fish. It begins with the pictures on the wall -- slightly turbid oils in which ghostly bass and haddock swim in some spectral river-dance of the half-finned and the sullen-eyed.
The food that follows betrays a similar kind of slightly swimmy, disoriented feeling. Not that it is any way unpleasant: far from it. Rather, it is as if the chef had got together with the fish and decided between them that, since they were all feeling rather fragile today, they were going to do everything they could to make sure the occasion passed off without incident. Unfortunately for the diner, they appear to have succeeded admirably.
Thus the fish and seafood soup (one of the Sea Market's "signature dishes") claimed to be "enhanced with saffron, fennel and orange." But it had retreated so far behind an anonymously fiery surface of spices, that the only thing one could be sure of was that it was thin in texture and served a little too hot. The promised garlic bread and rouille sauce might have improved matters, but mysteriously failed to materialise. My dining companion's lobster chowder had a more intriguing and distinctive taste -- rather like a good tomato soup -- but there was nothing in the least "creamy" about it; or even, for that matter, lobstery.
The baked grey mullet was average, and only averagely fresh, the tahina sauce having melded into the skin, and left the flesh itself largely untouched. The pièce de résistance, however, was the lobster thermidor, beautifully presented in its brilliant orange shell, and accompanied by saffron rice. This was creamy: so creamy, in fact, it was difficult to tell what was hollondaise and what was lobster. Perhaps that was a blessing in disguise. Either way, it was a delight to eat.
We finished up with an orange crème bržlée, which was nicely burned, and curiously replete with pieces of tinned peach.
The Sea Market is not a bad restaurant at all: housed in a rather pleasant room, the food is eminently edible. But it is also, as far as we could judge, largely characterless, which makes the steepness of the bill somewhat hard to bear. Lunch for two with three beers and coffee came to LE310, including tips.
Sea Market, Conrad International, Nile Corniche.
Tel 580 8000. Open daily for lunch and dinner. Closed 5.00-7.00 pm.
