4 - 10 January 2001
Issue No.515
|
Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 4 - 10 January 2001 Issue No.515 |
||
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Current issue | Previous issue | Site map | ||
Saving face
Some restaurants exist for the sole purpose of saving me, personally, from walking into the office without my review. They don't require reservations, they are so in your face that you know where to find them at the last minute and they offer a variety of foods that will accommodate any mood your appetite may be in. Such is the case with Big Boy. Right in the centre of Midan Sphinx, Mohandessin, Big Boy looms high and large. When we walked in, there weren't many people there; as a matter of fact, it was completely empty, making the place look even bigger than it already is.
The menu is absolutely enormous, not only in variety, but particularly in size. It is bright, colourful and extremely promising, criss-crossing the line distinguishing real dining from fast food. There are burgers and there are fully-fledged steaks. There are onion rings and there are fried shrimps. We began to sharpen our teeth, deciding to go for a real dinner and forget our nibbling intentions. For starters, I ordered a vanilla milkshake, the contents of which were divided between a glass and a tin shaker. Shame and humiliation: I didn't know what to do with them. I am a bad restaurant reviewer; I don't know how to handle a milkshake; I am an ignoramus... I wallowed in my imaginary mud the whole night through.
My husband had a broccoli soup, which was nicer in concept than in experience. Next we enjoyed two starters, with reservations: the buffalo deep-fried chicken tenders with blue cheese sauce were very tasty, but also very oily, while the onion rings were coated in a rich batter but were too thin and not soggy enough. What followed next was a fishy dish for my husband, and I say fishy because it tasted too much so. It was supposed to have been marinated to take the fishy taste away, but still managed to remain quite overpowering. As for my Cajun stir-fry shrimps with vegetables, all I did was eat the few tiny bits of shrimp and leave the rest. True, I was not as hungry as I usually try to be for a review meal, but the catch is that even when I am not hungry I eat, provided the food is delicious. That is one of the millions of bad habits I have not managed to shake over the years.
What normally follows dinner is dessert, and since we are normal people, we had some. He had a complicated structure consisting of ice-cream, brownies and chocolate fudge, and I had waffles with maple syrup. They were very, very good. We were both happy to call it a meal and pay our LE162.
Big Boy, 2, Gam'at Al-Duwal Al-Arabiya Street, Mohandessin.
Tel: 344 8463/4
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
 |
|
|||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
