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

Finding a great restaurant is never an easy task, but it gets much tougher in Ramadan. Restaurants all over town come up with different special offers and menus for the Holy month.

Located at Sky Center Ville in Sheikh Zayed, very close to Fresh Food Market, you’ll find Avitchii to be a nicely decorated restaurant. First impressions may make you feel that it’s a bit small, but you’ll find that things are quite spacious inside with a variety of seating options across two floors. High tables, comfy seats, and panoramic windows give you an even more spacious feel.

While the decorations may be the first thing to catch your attention, the service may prove even better. You’ll instantly feel the keenness and friendliness of the staff who’ll explain anything you ask about. We started our meal with a drink, they offer hibiscus (karkade) or sobia. So we chose the latter, and went on to enjoy the main part of the meal, which is an open buffet for 230++ EGP per person.

Since we visited the place during the first week of Ramadan, it wasn’t that crowded; most people spend their first week with their families at home. The buffet was categorised into soups: cream of vegetable, and cream of mushroom; salads: baba ghanoug, green salad, tahini, and a variety of pickles; appetisers: kobeiba, spring rolls with chicken or roast beef, and fried potato balls, and the main dishes: sautéed vegetables, boneless chicken, beef with mushroom sauce, fish fillet, basmati rice with bell peppers, and oven baked béchamel pasta. Finally, for desserts they only offered rice pudding during the time of our visit, even though they stated they had oriental desserts and Om Ali on Facebook.

Excited by the food styling and the friendliness of the staff and chefs, we went on to choose our meals. The staff was very helpful and insisted on giving us a hand to take our plates back to our tables. We started with the soups, which were unfortunately a tad too cold despite being put in clay pots, and even though they were a bit bland, we still found them creamy with a good taste. The salads were fresh and tasty, except for the baba ghanoug which needed more salt. As for the appetisers, they were quite flavoursome, we liked their crunchiness and how they didn’t feel oily.

As for the main dishes, the star of the table was definitely the beef with mushroom sauce. It was expertly cooked and very easy to chew, and the sauce complemented it perfectly. Our second favourite was perhaps the boneless chicken which was also very well cooked. The béchamel pasta needed a bit more béchamel, but was overall quite a tasty experience with the pasta cooked al dente. All their other dishes were properly made and tasted quite good.

We were, however, disappointed by the lack of choices in desserts, despite what they said on Facebook. The staff told us that there’s only one dessert per day, and they alternate. However, we did find the rice pudding to be delicious. We liked the texture and sweetness, but would have preferred more nuts in there for more crunchiness.

At the end, our experience was definitely enjoyable, and the staff were highly attentive and helpful. Most people are against eating out in Ramadan because restaurants make a lot of mistakes, but we didn’t feel this with Avitchii. But let’s see how they fare when it gets more popular.

Translated by: Sherif Khairy