It is All About Menus!

After the Otlob webiste (the ordering for home-delivery website in English), another website that can enhance the food experience for expats in Cairo is http://www.elmenus.com/. The tagline for the website says it all "It'a all about the menu!"

The menus of restuarants are listed on the website and it is possible to search for these restuarants by name. This is a boon, if for example you want to try out a new place but are not sure of what to expect at the restuarant. Through accessing the restuarant's menu on this website, you can avoid disappointments-both in terms of the food available and the prices.

If you are seized with the urge to eat a particular type of cuisine or even a particular dish, the website provides the possiblity of searching for restaurants offering that cuisine or dish. For example if you want to have a burger, then you type in 'burger' in the box provided for the search by cuisine and lo and behold!, all the restuarants that have burger on their menu will be listed together with details of the variety of burger and their prices.

You can search for restuarant menus by cuisine, by area, by special features (wi-fi, delivery, outdoor seating etc) or even use the website to get a list of restuarants and their menus that deliver in a particular area.

However, the website cannot be used to place the order at a restuarant. It does list the address, the timings and the telephone numbers of the restuarant. So, at least it does away with the necessity of saving the menus of your favourite restuarants for the purposes of ordering in food.

Their homepage has some interesting reviews of resturants by patrons, listings of the top five restuarants and the top 5 foods etc.

Eating around Cairo has never been so easy!

El-Shabrawy

El-Shabrawy is a vegetarian’s delight-the best Egyptian fare that I have had so far. With 17 different varieties of fuul, you are spoilt for choice. Fuul is fava beans, boiled and seasoned with lemon and spices. Shabrawy has fuul with tahina and chick peas, fuul with corn oil and with olive oil. I decided to go for King-El-Shabrawy which is fuul seasoned with salsa, tomatoes and eggs. It is served in attractive earthenware pots and tastes really good. The beans are cooked to perfection and the eggs that are added are allowed to cook till they set. The Alexandrian fuul is spiced with tomatoes, green peppers, onions, tahina and chick peas and I would recommend this too.

Felefel (popularly know as ta’miya in Egypt) are particularly crisp here, expecially Ain Katkot, which is falafel stuffed with boiled eggs-again, I would definitely recommend this. People who love their egg will love this place with omelettes and scrambled eggs on offer. Different types of salads, including baba ghanoug, tahina, taboula complete the Egyptian cuisine offering. The vegetable samosa is sure to tickle your taste buds.

A satisfying meal is one which apart from being tasty is also easy on the pocket. A meal for two with cold drinks would set you back by LE 35. Though El-Shabrawy has branches all over Cairo, the eatery at 10, Ibrahim Sreet, Korba, Heliopolis has the right ambience and you can enjoy your fuul and ta’miya piping hot, rather than go for the takeaway. The name here is signed in Arabic only-so look for a red awning and the shawerma grill outside which serve as indicators. The seating is on the mezzanine floor-try to get a table near the window so that you can watch the world go by while sipping on your fresh limon juice. The place seems to be a favourite with people of all ages and from all classes

The place also has pastas, sandwiches and burgers on offer but why would I want to have Italian or American cuisine at an Egyptian eatery?

Charwoods

More than a month since we came to Cairo and though we have dined out on a number of occasions, it has been exclusively at restaurants serving Indian cuisine. But eating Indian food in Cairo is not what a true gourmand would do. We love trying out different cuisines and different restaurants and hence we decided to venture out for non-Indian food. We chose Charwoods on Gamat-al Dawal Street. We cannot be as adventurous and just go out to any restaurant/ eating joint that takes our fancy because as vegetarians, our choice is severely limited.

The entry to Charwoods is quite unassuming and you are likely to miss it, if you are not looking for it. The interiors are done up in very pleasing warm shades and the ambience is extremely cozy. The menu is written on blackboards inside the restaurant and you just walk up to the board nearest to you and decide on your dish for the day. Alternatively, there is a lovely lady there who is extremely helpful and cheery and guides you through what the restuarant has to offer and also makes excellent recommendations. Will be sure to ask for her name the next time I go there. This is what I liked the best about the place because sometimes the best vegetarian dishes in a predominantly “meat place” is what the chef improvises and puts before you. We started with cream of broccoli soup and cream of tomato soup. The broccoli soup was absolutely divine. We followed it up with a scrumptious wood oven pizza. We really wanted to try the apple tart but we were stuffed and would not have been able to do justice to the tart. A word of advice-go easy on the complimentary bread and salad that they serve at the start…if you want to sample their desserts too. There are a couple of more pizzas which the vegetarians can choose from. Apart from pizzas, you can also have a dish of grilled vegetables served with baked potatoes and French fries.