Restaurant review:
Where is the rice?
Injy El-Kashef discovers that even she has limits
Axum is the ancient name of the Ethiopian capital. The simplicity of the restaurant's sand-coloured façade, with its huge wooden door and lack of windows, does attract your attention. Step inside and you feel it is different. The chandeliers are made of stretched, hand-painted leather. Low tables with coloured wicker baskets are surrounded by little tubs of red spices that are probably hot enough to be used as a torture device in a prison cell.
My adventurous friend and I sat down, giggled for a few minutes at something on the menu called "ketfu leb leb" and immediately noticed the conspicuous absence of rice on the menu. Not one grain to be seen. I don't know what came over her, but my friend kept repeating the question obsessively, almost hysterically, until I had to ask the waiter: "Why is there no rice on the menu?" His answer was embarrassingly simple: "Because it is not part of the traditional Ethiopian diet."
We settled for the Royal Assortment, which consists of any two vegetable dishes, one of meat, one of chicken and one of fish, for LE65. That made matters less complicated, as we were at a complete loss with the menu. We made our selections and before we knew it the appetisers had landed. If you are faint-hearted, you can skip the next paragraph.
The very first dish to arrive made me cringe with horror. "What are these strips of dried, mummified, human flesh doing in front of me???" I asked with complete and utter disgust. The waiter, ever so complacent, explained that this was the "air-dried meat you [yes, I was actually the one to pick it] ordered as an appetiser". Let me make this very clear: I have tried everything -- snails, 100-year-old eggs, frogs, iguana, shark, raw sea turtle eggs (I know what naturalists are thinking right now but it would have been an offense to my hosts in Latin America to refuse the eggs they dug straight out of the sand just for me) -- you name it. But nothing, nothing, I have ever seen beats this air- dried meat. As for taste, I cannot judge since I categorically refused to even take a second look at it and ordered it immediately removed from my sight.
Luckily, the Royal Assortment was delicious. Sitting on those beautifully-coloured wicker trays was one huge crêpe-like Ethiopian bread, on top of which were our five selections, their respective sauces seeping straight into the crêpe's pores. The food was all tasty, but familiarly so. The meat was like kebab halla. The chicken tasted like what you would get in a potato stew; the spinach like what I cook for my friends when they knock on my door, lost souls in the night. Even the fish with curry could have been found in any Asian restaurant.
Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy my meal very much. I only expected the food to be radically different from anything I had tasted before.
Our meal for two came to LE120.
Axum, St 279, No 29, Off Al-Nasr Road, New Maadi, Tel 520 0343
