5 - 11 April 2001
Issue No.528
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 5 - 11 April 2001 Issue No.528 |
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Flesh and fowl
It may include plastic table cloths, melamine plates, an assortment of mismatched forks and spoons in a variety of materials, though seldom, for some mysterious reason, knives. The walls may recently have been marble-clad and there could well be mirrors. The floor might be polished granite or something less hard-edged and sprinkled with sawdust. If it is the latter, then the walls are likely to be painted that shade of blue, or particularly sickly green, that seems to have been so popular in the seventies. The unifying element, though, will be the lighting: neon, from a single or multiple source it will cast its unforgiving light into the grimiest corner, or else will be reflected from newly-installed marble and polished granite, its intensity multiplied by mirrors that may, or may not, be adorned by Arabic calligraphy. The lighting hardens the edges of the dingiest hole-in-the-wall eatery, and can turn any visit to the recently renovated into a hyper-realist experience.
Neon is perhaps the least seductive of lighting schemes. It is the great passion killer of the illuminated world, purely utilitarian, a thing by which one does useful things, like assembling car components on a factory line, slaughtering chickens in an abattoir or -- more debatable this, if only in terms of utility -- it is the kind of light beneath which one toils in a windowless newspaper office.
The romantic, neon-lit dinner has yet to enter the lexicon of cliché and it is the least likely candidate to replace the candle as the preferred light source on such occasions. The reasons for this are obvious: few the complexions, let alone the features, that cannot benefit from a little handy chiaroscuro, a little softening of the edges.
That in Cairo so many restaurants -- the term here is intended to denote places that sell food to be consumed on the premises -- prefer neon to any other form of lighting, is a not insignificant fact. It is, indeed, probably the majority of eateries that continue to turn on the unforgiving strip. True, there are a growing number of restaurants, across the spectrum, that have opted for something far less harsh, and the more up-market recent arrivals on the restaurant scene are, more often than not, swathed in gloom. But neon, numerically, predominates, from kushari shops to fuul shops to fast food outlets.
The food served beneath the lights varies enormously. It includes some of the freshest fish available in the city, in Shubra's justly celebrated fish restaurants, as well as some of the greasiest tamiaa, cooked in the oldest oil, doled out in quantity in an anonymous back street. It takes in the new crop of fast food places, as well as the by now venerable international purveyors of burgers and chicken. If you do not recognise the ubiquity of the neon-lit dining experience it says rather more about the places in which you choose to eat than on the number and type of restaurants in town.
Is it a failure of the imagination to be able to come up with not a single, remotely sensuous experience that could possibly occur beneath a neon light? And if it is not a failure of the imagination, then what does this say about the dining-out experience as it is most commonly felt, at breakfast, lunch time, or in the evening, across Cairo?
Vast numbers of people, of course, cannot afford to view eating as anything other than refueling, a stoking up on things that will keep the belly full, that will stave off hunger until the next meal comes along. But this is not always the case. Shubra's fish restaurants, for example, can hardly be considered cheap, can, indeed, prove quite expensive, though the expense is almost always justified, which cannot be said for many more pretentiously decorated establishments. So too the kebab shops found in every part of town. Quarter of a kilo of grilled meat is hardly a poor person's lunch. Yet the glaring neon lights turn these relatively expensive eating experiences into exercises deprived of anything but the most utilitarian aesthetic.
Egypt's is not a foodie culture. This may seem a sweeping statement but can you honestly think of any other city of comparable size that can boast so few restaurants in which you would choose to go to eat when feeling depressed, when feeling in need of cheering up?
Take a stroll through the market and glance around -- now is an excellent time to do so, since in a couple of months the array of available vegetables will have dwindled to just tomatoes, wrinkled, thick-skinned aubergines, and a few, limp salads. Now, though, artichokes are piled high next to mountains of creamy white cauliflowers. Peas glisten in their pods. There are several varieties of beans, heaps of swiss chard, spinach so fresh the leaves are difficult to bruise. Frame the right view and it could easily grace the cover of a glossy, coffee table cookbook.
And what is going to happen to all this largesse? The majority will end up smothered in tomato sauce, boiled until anything so much as a distinctive texture, let alone taste, has been removed. Often the only alternative to this fate is to be drowned in a glutinous béchamel sauce, more flour than cream, and no flavouring apart from a pinch of grated nutmeg, pored over a vegetable boiled far beyond vegetable endurance.
The excesses of nouvelle cuisine were never going to gain a toehold in Egypt. Courgette flowers have never been stuffed with garlic, olive oil and rouselle tomatoes roasted so carefully that the concentration of flavours defies belief. They were never going to be placed, slightly off-centre on an enormous white, china plate, atop a bright green purée of watercress. No one is ever going to have to adopt a position arguing the merits of wild over cultivated lettuce during a Cairene dinner party conversation, which is not, necessarily, a bad thing. And during any festive occasion, the delicate is always going to lose out to the monumental.
Best to remember, then, that the delicate, when it gets too delicate, is -- tellingly -- in danger of being bleached into nothingness by neon light. That stuffed courgette flower is never going to stand up to such intensely functional scrutiny.
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