Restaurant review:

The view from Kandahar

The road to perdition through the eyes of a literary giant

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What in Cairo sums best its shambolic greatness? What truly captures its seething, sizzling, somersaulting insouciance? Not the khan, too retro. Not the citadel, too serene. Not the Nile, too divinely incidental. Not the Pyramids, too much perfection. Gamaat Al-Duwal Al-Arabiya is what it's all about. We've made it with our own hands and we'll do it again if given the chance -- the street, not its distressed namesake on Tahrir Square. Gamaat Al-Duwal is impossible to cross, noisy to distraction, crowded to suffocation, and we keep going back to it, like a criminal to the scene of his first offence. A French novelist once said everyman is responsible for his face after 40. Gamaat Al-Duwal is the mirror of our collective face, even faith. One day the deity of urban landscape will push a hologram of that street under our nose and ask us to repent. It will make us homesick.

We have honoured this extraordinary piece of modernity with a statue of a literary giant at its northern tip. A few steps away from the ramps that wrap around the neck of Sphinx Square like a cement necktie, stands Naguib Mahfouz, in effigy, for all eternity. You too can rise that high, if you find the glass lift. The see-through contraption will levitate you to the third floor without you missing the view for a second. From the front windows of Kandahar, you'll be treated to the silenced spectacle of people dodging cars, beggars distracting people dodging cars, and cars doing their best to run both down.

A basin-full of red rose petals promises you love and peace at the restaurant's entrance. The sound of Indian music, stuttering, stumbling, falling and rising again, will send you soaring to mountain tops peopled with orange-robed monks and cinnamon-scented women in sun-dried saris. On the walls are mirrors with painted shutters, some closed with small chains. We've seen enough, metaphorically the mirrors shout, humans are all the same.

The white-clothed table at which we sit has sizeable brass plates, one for each prospective eater. Half way through the meal, I discover I am eating from ordinary china. Where have the brass plates gone? Apparently, they vanished just before the meal. They were just an omen, a tableware premonition, a visual appetiser, a roadmap to the lost territory of etiquette. Stay here, the brass plate says, place your elbows on each side of me, slide them down slowly, five or six inches. Once I am gone, stick to this part of the table, don't go bothering your neighbours and knocking over bottles of expensive beverages. OK?

The food is an avalanche of flavours. The samosas filled with little peas and potatoes invoke the scent of cloves. The mashed potato patties are brown and delicate like an early summer suntan. The smoked eggplants will send you peering through the window. If this is what smoke can do, give me more of this city. The chickpeas appetiser will ease you with a crunch onto gluttony, like gravel on the driveway to perdition. Perdition is next. The fish curry, tandouri chicken, lamb curry are obsessive. We have ordered too much and we're not regretting it. Thankfully, the stir-fried chicken that goes by the unhelpful penname of Murgh Jalafareizi, is bland, forgiven, and left alone. Don't order dessert, trust me.

Kandahar, the city after which the restaurant is named, has been in the news quite enough. Everyone knows it was once full of robed folks who dislike American architecture and carved imagery. What is less commonly known is that the city was built by the greatest imperialist of them all. Alexander the Great created it in 329BC and named it after himself, along with half a dozen cities worldwide. The name Kandahar is the local corruption of Alexandria.

Kandahar, 3 Gamaat Al-Duwal al-Arabiya St, Mohandesin, (02) 3030615, open noon to midnight daily, efficient, upmarket, and serene, offers Indian cuisine along with a view of urban raucousness toned down by soundproof windows. Dinner for four, including a bottle of local wine: LE450.

By Nabil Shawkat