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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 April 2000 Issue No. 477 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 April 2000 Issue No. 477
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Living with liver
By Injy El-KashefAll shopping malls include at least one option by way of food. The older malls offered the modest possibility of an ice-cream cone or a cold tuna sandwich. The newer generation, on the other hand, takes the food situation quite seriously. Each and every one of them is endowed with either a food court (and that often means several cuisines all in one sitting area) or a series of separate restaurants -- the way it is done at Geneina Mall.
Overlooking a small ice-skating rink teeming with Cairo's next generation is Al-Tabliya, specialising in Oriental cuisine. It is quiet and empty, dark and rather gloomy, sheltering a few lonesome male diners picking at their food with the enthusiasm of candidates for a root canal.
But Umm Kulthoum was in the air and the waiter was very eager to oversee our visit -- the menu landed in our hands before we had even taken our seats. It listed many eclectic dishes, which normally one would not expect at an Oriental restaurant, especially if the Orient in question is our little corner of the East, as the restaurant's name seems to indicate. Among them were spring rolls (which I made sure to order for the fun of it), as well as many dishes based on, or garnished with, mushrooms. Mushrooms here, mushrooms there, mushrooms everywhere.
Our "hot appetisers" arrived first. The spring rolls were quite tasty, the fried brain (yep) was actually very good, but the chicken livers were awful. Although they looked well cooked, they were still very pink on the inside, and the sauce tasted as though it had experienced the entire heat wave outside the refrigerator.
In the middle of our appetisers, my lisan asfour soup arrived. A very eager waiter indeed. When kindly requested to take the livers back to the kitchen for more cooking, he explained -- at great length -- that not only do chicken livers always look pink on the inside, it is in their very nature to do just that. The only answer to this tirade, it seemed, was to swear that we had already eaten chicken livers before. We remained silent, however, and I finished my too-salty soup in silence, occasionally glancing in the waiter's direction with feigned interest at his continuing lecture.
The main courses fared far better. My filet mignon was fine -- not fantastic, but fine. The few mushrooms sitting on top of the meat, as the waiter had previously explained, had to be borrowed from the Italian restaurant next door. As for my friend's lamb chops, they were fairly tasty, although erring on the greasy side.
After this unfulfilling and quite existentially perplexing meal, we requested the menu for some "Oriental" desserts. None were inscribed, but our waiter generously offered to sprint over to the next-door patisserie for some mahalabiya and rice pudding. A good thing we accepted: they were positively delicious.
Although the best part of the meal was the orange juice, the bill nevertheless came to LE107.
Al-Tabliya, Geneina Mall, Madinat Nasr.
Tel: 4046261
