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

If you’re a sushi lover, you’ll totally agree with us that you wouldn’t mind having sushi all day, everyday. The only thing that’s stopping you is that it’s no ‘menu-el fakka’. We stumbled upon Kyoto Sushi’s account on social media, and let’s just say its competitive offers caught our attention.

Kyoto is located inside Beverly Hills Compound, Sheikh Zayed, and spoiler alert, don’t judge a store by its location. The venue is basically a shoji (Japanese-ish walls) cube with six tables. There was only one waiter (and God knows how many chefs in the kitchen) responsible for the whole place. This explains why it took them an hour to serve our food.

Kyoto has an offer on Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays for which you create a 50 pieces platter for 340 LE and a 100 pieces platter for 599 LE. We went with the 50 pieces offer which is was more than enough for 3 people. The variety on the menu is huge and it’s on the commercialised side. Our plate consisted of the following rolls; fried spicy lemon, nigiri panko salmon, nigiri shrimp, nigiri salmon, nigiri panko tuna, pineapple roll, Philadelphia roll, kyoto roll, and pesto roll, yes, pesto.

Starting with the fried spicy lemon, it tasted quite similar to Mori Sushi’s but the spicy mayo had a funky smell to it. Meanwhile, the nigiri panko salmon tasted like fried chicken on top of rice. The panko shrimp also had the same breading. As for the tuna and salmon nigiri, both were slightly dry and not so fresh. On the bright side, the texture of the rice was quite good but it lacked seasoning for sure. If we have to pick a favourite roll, it would have to be the pineapple roll. The roll was filled with surprisingly well prepared shrimp tempura, avocado, cucumber, and was topped with pineapple cubes and teriyaki sauce.

Moving to the Philadelphia roll, it consisted of salmon, avocado, cucumber, cream cheese, smoked salmon, and teriyaki sauce. Just like every other place, the cream cheese overpowered the rest of the filling. Their pesto roll has to be one of the strangest sushi rolls we’ve tried in Egypt. It was again, a Philadelphia roll but this time it was topped with pesto mayo. We couldn’t explain how we felt about this mix, but basil and sushi wasn’t our cup of tea.

All in all, we’re not sure we’d go back to Kyoto. Yes, the prices are competitive but it’s not worth the poorer quality and sloppy service for sure.