The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

More now than ever, restaurants in Cairo are doing their best to introduce new concepts and different dishes to standout in the market, but not all of them manage to pull it off. With Cairo Festival City’s newest addition, Brix, we have a restaurant that offers dishes from all around the world and though you wouldn’t necessarily claim it to be a fine-dining restaurant, quite a lot of the dishes seem masterfully conceived.

Taking Ruby Tuesday’s old place in The Village section of the mall, Brix has a simple outdoor area with a beautiful vertical slat wood fence and a spacious indoor area that has an overall casual and cosy ambiance, with a beige colour theme and grey furniture. 

When it comes to food, the menu has a wide variety including a lot of classics, alongside unusual dishes. To give you an idea of how wide the variety is, we ordered a Classic Reuben Sandwich (120LE), Moroccan Couscous (125LE) and a Parmesan Crusted Chicken Breast (110LE), but the menu also offers pizza, pasta, and burgers.

While we waited for our international feast, we ordered the Garden Bar (80LE). The refillable salad bar was underwhelming, as the only choices at the time of our visit were a bland bean salad, tuna salad, pasta salad, broccoli, lettuce, and a wide variety of sauces but there was nothing indicating what was in each. Essentially, it was satisfactory if measure against fast-food restaurants’ salad bars, but quite steep for 80LE.

Moving to the mains, the description of classic Reuben on the menu was ‘a classic deli sandwich, rye bread slices, topped with tangy Russian sauce, homemade corned beef, shredded cabbage and gruyere cheese’ – which sounded incredible. However, with very little cabbage and Russian sauce, it was quite dry and lacked the freshness and bite of vegetables, while the shredded beef was over-salted.

We had a similar problem with the Moroccan couscous. We expected strong spices, but the dish was topped withvery few amount raisins and chickpeas, the vegetables were under-seasoned and the chicken wasn’t deboned well. Even the bowl of chicken jus also lacked flavour and seasoning.

On the other hand, the Parmesan Crusted Chicken was the star of the show. The dish came in the form of four perfectly fried chicken rolls with a fantastic crispy crust, stuffed with beef bacon and spinach alongside a tangy and rich lemon butter sauce, and a side of pomme boulangère – baked slices of potatoes and onions with some rosemary on top. The menu didn’t state that there’s beef bacon and spinach in the dish, but it was a nice surprise and our favourite item of the whole meal.

We finished with Apple Beignets (35LE) for dessert, though we waited for more than 50 minutes. It was worth the wait, however; consisting of five thick apple rings coated with a very light, airy and crispy crusts, sprinkled with cinnamon-sugar mix, and served with a fantastic lemon cream that had a sticky custard-like consistency. It was all in all good, but maybe an acquired taste.

In the end, we left Brix feeling that it has plenty of potential. Everything pointed to a great meal, but with some of the dishes, missing ingredients left them unbalanced – and when you’re dealing with complex flavour pairings and nuances, one little misstep or acsence can make all the difference. On the bright side, the staff were great and if these slight issues can be fixed by the end of the soft-opening phase, then Brix could be a force to be reckoned with.