Restaurant review: Radical hip
Youssef Rakha samples Che's assorted delights
Café Guevara, one of the most successfully advertised restaurant-cafeterias to emerge on the Cairo scene in 2003, boasts a convenient location, an informal atmosphere and a rich, varied menu. It has its instant shortcomings, too, sadly. And one's initial disappointment on walking in will likely be two-fold. First, in the attempt to replicate the outfit of Che's guerrillas, the staff manages to look not like Latin American revolutionaries -- and that would have been intimidating enough -- but rather like Egyptian central security guards. This has the effect of momentarily reawakening the sense of helpless agitation one always experiences on unexpectedly encountering central security. Secondly, the café's informality has a hip declension to it -- by the current, middle-class standards of hip, that is. This means clustered, subdued lights coupled with shisha water pipes and numerous, unavoidable television screens playing loops of pop video clips. And to top it all up, in the present instance -- vaguely pop-art, mostly monochrome posters of Che against the predominantly red backdrop of the walls: Che smiling, Che pondering, Che puffing on his pipe, Che inspecting a piece of paper, Che in the middle of a conversation... the poses are endless.
Service proved adequate and speedy, what with several staff members seemingly idle at 10pm or 10.30pm, when we arrived at the elaborately and, it has to be said, somewhat tastelessly decorated entrance. The menu, ludicrously entitled "Guevara's Main Issues", includes several interesting appetisers and main courses as well as the usual staple of hip-café hot and (non-alcoholic) cold drinks and desserts. Neither of us being incredibly hungry, as it happened, we opted for those dishes that have Guevara appended to their names to share, the better to evaluate the culinary side of that long-dead revolutionary's omnipresence: Guevara salad (an interesting variation of salad niçoise), Guevara boats (stuffed potato dumplings with a vaguely Mexican dressing) and Guevara penne (a delicately spiced sauce of many fragrant herbs infusing the steaming pasta). The last element of our modest medley was an almost faultless pleasure. The plentiful pasta was cooked to just the right texture, with each of some seven different herbs and spices adding its own individual accent without disturbing the overall harmony of the dish. Except for a hint of bitterness, the source of which neither of us could determine, the boat-shaped dumplings -- a far- fetched reference to one of the modes of transport employed by Che's guerrillas, perhaps? -- were equally satisfying. Hot without being too spicy, colourfully presented with assorted fresh vegetables, they would have been sufficient for our appetite. As it turned out, the Guevara salad had the same inexplicable note of bitterness; and though an otherwise rich and rewarding experience, we did not eat much of it in the end.
The denouement to this brief and thus far enjoyable drama involved a visit to an inner lounge that had smaller replicas of unmanipulated photographs of Che -- the place's only stab at authenticity, by the look of it -- as well as a quick leafing through an Arabic book written by Magdi El- Sherif, the café's owner, Guevara: the Revolutionary Physician and a surprisingly excellent cup of Turkish coffee. Conversations with the waiters proved amusing. "So, do you get people planning an overthrow of the government here?" No, just people who admire that figure. "But these caps that you're wearing, they're not really berets, are they?" One minute and I'll get you a beret just like the one Guevara wore. And so on. But by the time we had paid our bill (which came to approximately LE40), one couldn't help feeling that Guevara must be turning in his grave.
Café Guevara is open from 10am to 1am daily
48 Iran St, off Mohieddin Abul-Ezz St, Dokki
Tel 7620970
