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

Sometimes life doesn’t go as planned, but then you come to stumble upon something good; by mere chance, we came across Sinatra. It is in the middle of West Square boasting a comfortable indoors and a spacious outdoor area. What made us decide to try out the restaurant is how cheerful and confident about their food the staff were when we asked to see the menus before even taking a seat.

We opted for a table outside and began to choose our appetiser. We wanted to get a salad this time around, and our waiter recommended the Rucola Salad (65LE) – marinated watercress leaves with lemon balsamic dressing, topped with shredded Parmesan, marinated mushrooms, and roasted almonds. The salad was amazingly fresh; from the watercress to the mushrooms, everything was delightful. We ordered more dressing, other than that, it was spot on. We then ordered an Orange Carrot juice (40LE) which was fresh, with a little sugar and exactly how we wanted it; a balanced, refreshing juice.

Looking at the menu once more, thinking we would try their pizza, so we chose the Pizza Mediterranean (79LE) – tomato sauce, pesto, artichoke, sundried tomato, spinach, olives, and oregano, with mozzarella and Feta instead of Gouda. This was, hands down, an excellent pizza; from the dough to the ingredients. Each ingredient was carefully placed so that each slice gathered all the flavours; which is superb attention to detail. The crust was thin, the cheese was creamy, and everything else blended perfectly, which gave an authentic, garden-fresh taste.

For our other main dish, we got My King of Town (199LE) – humorously named after one of Frank’s Sinatra’s songs; fried shrimp with balsamic fried onion and mustard herb sauce, with a side of baked potato. It was quite a distinctive mix of flavours. The onions were pleasingly sweet, and the shrimps were faultlessly fried, which tasted fresh and went very well with the mustard sauce. For us, the real fascination was the baked potato; it was baked potato with a pesto potato puree filling that was perfectly creamy and herby.

So far, we had loved all the dishes served to us. We decided to finish our meal with another recommendation from the staff. The Lotus Madness (66LE) – Lotus biscuits with vanilla ice cream topped with caramel sauce. Obviously, it was basically biscuits and ice cream; even though it lacked innovation, it was creatively served. It was an ice cream cake layered with biscuit in the middle and caramel all around – it was decent and certainly sizeable.

All in all, our visit was a fruitful one; Sinatra is a really great place to have lunch or dinner; its location is quite calm, and the staff know how to please a customer. They checked on each dish that came to us, and the chef came out to greet us, probably because we were complementing the food so much. Certainly a place worth visiting and the food is not to be missed.