Al-Ahram Weekly | Living | Health and the city

		12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Living	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

Health and the city
Injy El-Kashef will invest in pleasure any day

Every once in a blue moon it actually happens that I crave the healthy and the guiltless. Although rich and creamy thoughts will attempt to overcome the rare mental images of raw vegetables and fat-free stock, I resist and, feeling a halo begin to glow above my head, I head to the nearest healthy food joint before there is a chance to change my mind. The scariest part is that when these moods hit it is extremely difficult to find a place catering to them, luckily for my self-image not too many people seem any more eager for "healthy" than myself. A couple of years ago rumours circulated about a "healthy salads only" outlet which never materialised. My suspicion is that simple market research had revealed to the would-be owners that they were better off investing their money in a pasta parlour or something. Pity though; I personally was quite looking forward to that crunchy salad affair for it would have at least fulfilled my occasional need for healthy.
I found the next best approximation at Crepaway, that Lebanese joint which recently branched out in Egypt. This place should operate on a 24-hour basis, for sure. Breakfast does not start at 11am for everybody and a middle-of-the-night fresh bite is not a rare desire for the kind of midriff-bared clientele I saw walking in and out of there. Incidentally, I also saw children at 12.30am, watching The Lion King II on the large flat-screened TVs hanging overhead as they munched on their burgers in the company of their bored but impeccably dressed mothers.
Why should anyone dress up for potato wedges?
And the answer is not because that's how they dress everyday -- no way. The self- consciousness with which these women walked about betrayed their deliberate efforts in front of the mirror. Oh well, it takes all kinds to make a world.
As far as we were concerned, no kitten heels or linen trousers were going to stand in our way. We ignored the sections labelled "sandwiches", "appetising platters", "burgers", "side orders" and went straight to the salads. They were both exquisite: one consisted of processed crab meat and avocado and the other of mushrooms, artichoke hearts and asparagus. Both also contained large amounts of crispy lettuce and huge amounts of sweet corn. Along with our salads, we also devoured some savoury crêpes. Yes, ok, I said I wanted healthy food, but I hadn't yet seen the menu, which came folded up in squares like calzoni: one with spinach, sweet corn and cream and the other with cheese, beef salami and mushrooms. Delicious fresh orange juice and wonderful food in a slick, simple and clean diner-type interior, expensively decorated and perfectly finished. But the best was yet to come: the sweet crêpes.
Hers was filled with apple sauce topped with caramel and vanilla ice-cream, while mine could have been no less than chocolate with banana filling, topped with chocolate sauce and roasted nuts. We were bordering the fine line between pleasure and pain at that point these crêpes were agony. With an LE200 bill in our hands, we had full tummies and no regrets.
Crepaway, 4 Ibn Kathir St, off Al-Nil St, Giza

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