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

In the past few years, Cairo has witnessed the rise of many local brands in many fields including food and beverages. One of these brands is L’éclair Paris, which started off as a cart in Downtown Mall in New Cairo with a limited amount of éclair choices. The enterprise proved to be such a huge success that, in a matter of a year, L’éclair Paris conquered various areas around Cairo with branches in Maadi, Mohandiseen and Mall of Arabia, to name but a few. We decided to visit the latter to see how L’éclair Paris has fared since our last visit to the Maadi branch.

Located inside the 6th October City Mall next to Galaxy Cineplex cinema, the square-shaped booth comprises three displays; two of them for the éclairs and other pastries, while the other has ice cream. Since our main interest was the éclairs, we headed to the display which boasts a variety of flavours, from which we opted for the renowned red velvet éclair (18LE) and an all-time classic, chocolate éclair (16LE). Unable to resist the temptation of trying one or two desserts from the other display, we ordered a Nutella Tart (19LE) and a bowl of tiramisu (14LE).

The first thing we tried was the chocolate éclair; despite the noticeably fresh choux dough, both of the chocolate cream filling and topping were bland and not as sweet as we expected. On the other hand, the red velvet éclair fared better with its sweet, rich cream filling, however, the glaze topping had an unpleasant artificial strawberry flavour.

Disappointed when considering our previous review for L’éclair Paris, the Nutella tart had the same problem the chocolate éclair had; the base of the tart was outstandingly crunchy, tasty and fresh, yet the topping was bland. Formed of a layer of chocolate cream and a criss-crossed chocolate drizzle, the topping had no taste of Nutella at all.

The imperfections of what we have tried so far made us doubt the tiramisu as well, but it turned out to be the highlight of our visit. The tiramisu had the perfect balance between the rich cream and the cake in the centre.

Obviously, this was not the happiest of our visits to L’éclair Paris. Though the base of every dessert we tried was fresh and tasty, something went wrong with the filling and topping, whose quality is crucial for offering the perfect dessert.