Restaurant review
Let it roll
Injy El-Kashef likes it raw
My poor friends do not get the chance to lunch or dine at familiar places when I am in their midst. Every week they have to be dragged to a new place without knowing whether it is worthy of their time, money and stomachs. But that's what I like -- always maintaining an element of surprise. After all, familiarity can breed contempt.
This time they found themselves heading to Okashi, the Japanese restaurant at the Nile Tower. I was the only one interested in sushi, surprisingly enough. The rest opted for more familiar flavours, i.e. cooked food. The menu at Okashi is somewhat intimidating. Prohibitively expensive, item after item is listed with a full description, leaving one at a complete loss.
Seated around the rectangular Tepan Yaki table with a dexterous chef chopping, slicing and mixing colourful ingredients together, we all quietened down when the "show" began, refraining from hurling amicable atrocities at each other for just a few moments. Soon enough, however, after identifying the rice, noodles, vegetables, salmon, shrimp, chicken, beef and eggs, and seeing them gradually transform into exquisite aromas, the giggles and verbal leg pulling were back in full swing. "What was that you said?" the friend sitting next to me asked a male friend seated across the table. "Nothing, I was just being nasty to Injy -- again," he replied with a loud chuckle. Luckily, my platter of sushi arrived, and I began contemplating whether I should fling wasabi bullets into his eye or decide that what he had said was not bad enough to cost him one of his five senses. I chose to remain polite.
I had expected seven sushi items but found 11 in front of me; they consisted of whitefish, tuna, grey mackerel, flying fish eggs, salmon and shrimp. Pickled ginger, some soy sauce in a little dish, a lump of wasabi, and stir... Heaven.
Meanwhile, the Tepan Yaki was nearly prepared when the chef asked us in jest to count the number of slices he was about to inflict on the omelette before mixing it with the fried rice. Proudly, I recall that while everyone else applauded, I managed to count 30 slices -- and a quarter, perhaps. Bowls and plates were filled and silence reigned. As usual, the food was plentiful, once more defying the erroneous impression we all have about Japanese cuisine being minimalist and light. In fact, starting with a salad of soy beans with a lightened mayonnaise sauce followed by some miso soup, by the time we dug into our main courses we were half full.
And don't let that Tepan Yaki fool you. It is not grilled food; it is fried in oil, with numerous lumps of butter sliding onto the sizzling surface every so often. Nor is it particularly friendly on your colon -- just think of all that onion, garlic, soy and chili sauce spicing things up. But then again, who ever said healthy was good?
After bolting down almost all of our food, it was time to fool ourselves into thinking a lemon sorbet would melt all the grease. And so a delicious sorbet to the right of the table, a fried banana dessert to the left, and we completed our delicious meal at LE140 a head.
Okashi, Nile Tower, Garden City Corniche
Tel 362 1894
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 22 - 28 May 2003 (Issue No. 639)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/639/li2.htm