Restaurant review:
Unpleasantly surprised
Injy El-Kashef is saved by the belly-dancer
Spontaneous adventures are among the simplest and cheapest blessings of life. Not that the adventure itself is necessarily inexpensive, yet it costs no more than an open mind, a bit of flexibility and some joie de vivre to actually embrace a spontaneous adventure, and that is the blessing in question.
In this week's quest for a new restaurant, again I found myself aimlessly driving around the city -- incorrigible me -- asking my co-pilot to "keep an eye on both sides of the pavement for restaurants". About half an hour of directionless driving on an empty stomach I spotted a moored boat on the Maadi Corniche. Thinking it would, like its sisters on the Zamalek Corniche, boast a variety of restaurants I could pick from, I pulled over, only to be informed by the parking attendant that it would set off in five minutes.
A Nile cruising restaurant! And we caught it just in time! And we hadn't planned for it! And it served open buffet dinner! Honestly, a blessing or not?
Few of the many tables were occupied; some by foreigners, some by couples in love and one by a large family celebrating a birthday. Quite frankly, two minutes of being there and I already knew what to expect from the buffet, based on a few small details that say it all to the experinced diner. And, as anticipated, the buffet was poor, the service mediocre, and the ambiance one may like to observe but not be part of.
The one element that made this boat ride a real pleasure when it had all the requirements of a nightmare, was unquestionably the company: my dining partner gets all the credit for that. The amazing scenery also helped tremendously: picture the Nile at dusk through vista windows, its banks studded with lush plam trees. Bad food or not, the Nile is the Nile is the Nile.
The waiters, whenever they weren't trying to remove the plates from under our noses while we were still eating, were constantly hovering around, which really was quite unsettling. Why the hurry, this sense of panic and emergency? We are on a Nile cruise, for heaven's sake... relaxing, unwinding, isn't that the whole point?
Now, I don't particularly enjoy being nasty, even when I have every right to be, but this time I can't help it. In a nutshell, the food on this boat was terrible: meat dish after meat dish after meat dish, all equally untasty, uncooked and seemingly recycled; the only pasta dish was fettucine with very little tomato sauce; oily sautéed vegetables; the vine leaves I could not even approach... a real disgrace. Even the desserts were barely edible, not to mention hardly recognisable. And if I were really nasty, I would mention that I found a fly in the pickles, but I won't because I am an indulgeant and forgiving person.
Luckily the belly-dancer slightly made up for this terrible state of affairs, as she was sweet and funny and helped the foreign diners make total fools of themselves on the dance floor, something any tourist always enjoys.
Our two-hour boat ride came to an end, and as we sat waiting for the door to open, we had a chance to see how the glasses we had all drank in were being cleaned for the next round of customers: they were dipped in a metal bucket of hot water and soap and then dried with a towel. My stomach turned one more time, and I regretted the LE215 bill even more.
Nile Crystal Boat (Misr Travel), Maadi Corniche
