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

Le Cairo 1940 offers a pleasant outdoor seating area in addition to the larger, main indoor area. What’s strange, and inevitably uncomfortable for some, is that the restaurant serves shisha indoors.

Choosing to enjoy the weather outside, it took us a while to get our heads around the huge menu. An eclectic range of soups are offered, including cream of chicken, orzo and molokheya at 18LE-40LE. Appetisers include chicken livers, mombar, spring rolls, balady sausage and stuffed vine leaves at a more modest range; 19LE-25LE.

The Oriental section of the menu offers Egyptian and Middle Eastern classics such as stuffed pigeon (39LE), chicken sherkeseya (58LE), stuffed duck (69LE) and molokheya with shrimp or rabbit (45LE/59LE).

The grilled section, unlike many classic Egyptian restaurants around Cairo, afford you the option of buying your meat as a dish rather than by the kilo. A huge mixed grill platter for three, for example, sets you back 199LE. One thing that is overpriced is the salad. A small plate of Egyptian salad, baba ghanough or tehina costs 15LE!

After much deliberation, we settled on the veal with potato (60LE) from the Oriental section, and never looked back. The meat was cooked perfectly and made for a tender mix with tomato, peppers and potatoes. We couldn’t come to Le Caire 1950 without trying its famous grilled meats, and so we also went for the mixed grill (56LE). The dish consists of three portions of kofta, kabab and shish tawouk. As expected, the grilled meats are outstanding and seasoned perfectly, the latter of which can be attributed to the Le Caire special sauce. The portions offered in the main dishes are filling, unlike the appetisers, however. The balady sausage (25LE), for example, was meagre despite its great flavour.

Le Cairo 140’s menu doesn’t just stop at Egyptian dishes, though. International dishes such as scallop, fajitas and duck with orange sauce sit at between 50LE and 70LE. In this non-Egyptian vein, we avoided the Oriental desserts, instead going for a Nutella crepe (22LE). It’s a choice that we quickly regretted; the crepe wasn’t cooked all the way through.

Although it was a disappointing end to what was a tour de force in Middle Eastern cuisine, it hasn’t sullied Le Caire 1940 enough to deny it a well-deserved four-star rating.