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

The menu offered promising Spanish and international dishes. Big fans of authentic Spanish cuisine ourselves, we opted to do it the traditional way and started off with tapas.

We also gave the Andalucía (17.50LE) a go; a small bowl of delicious chicken liver in cherry sauce with cooked tomatoes and green pepper. The chicken was perfectly tender and the sauce wasn’t too sweet as to overwhelm – it was by far, our favourite dish. The tapas came with complimentary toasted bread which was perfect for dipping into the Andalucía.

While deciding on the rest of the food, we marvelled at the flamboyant copycat Picasso paintings hanging on the walls. Despite the cliché, we wished there had been some flamenco or salsa music to set an ambiance rather than the banal western music videos playing on the flat screen TVs.

For the main dishes, we couldn’t wait to get our hands on the seafood paella (53.50LE) and the Spanish saffron chicken (49.50LE). The paella came as a concoction of rice, mussels, shrimp, red and yellow sweet pepper, peas, beans and freshly cut tomatoes. It wasn’t truly up to par with our expectations; it was lacking in seasoning, which could’ve given the dish the extra oomph that it needed.

The saffron chicken wasn’t that much more impressive; it was absolutely bland and an utter disappointment. The dish was supposed to consist of chicken in cream sauce with garlic, basil, rosemary and saffron, but none of that came through when we tried the dish. It came with a serving of white rice and sautéed vegetables which, truth be told, were cooked well but not enough to salvage the chicken.

As for the chocolate cake; it was soft, big and topped with an equally warm and equally sweet chocolate sauce which wasn’t bereft of taste, but it wasn’t the most striking either.