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

As Mall of
Arabia in 6th of October City grows into its own, more and more
interesting dining venues are opening up. Located opposite the impressive
Pestle and Mortar is newly opened restaurant Yatsa. Offering a range
of pasta dishes and international cuisine, the restaurant’s open area stands out on account of
its black, purple and pink interior, and its cool fork-shaped chairs. Each
glass-covered table is made of compartments that hold different pastas for
show.  The menu is available in both
Arabic and English, and features a whole host of dishes.  

At 30LE,
the combo platter from the starters menu is just about enough for two people.
The dish is made up of some rather bland but well-cooked chicken wings, cold
and tasteless fried mozzarella sticks and a large serving of fried calamari.
The disappointment was eased a little by the smoky tasting barbeque sauce.

Yatsa
offers a rather large range of pasta dishes, and so for our mains we went for
the fish and shrimp (69.99LE). The dish comes as a fillet of fish set on angel
hair pasta with a butter and lemon sauce. Plonked on top of that with no real
thought was a hefty helping of shrimp. Although the pasta sauce was neither
buttery nor lemony, it was creamy and the heavy dosage of peppers and capers
packed enough punch into the flavour to save it. Both the fish and the prawns
were cooked well but were overpowered by the sauce, while the perfectly cooked
pasta was probably the highlight of the dish.

We also
tried the scaloppini (71.99LE); a beef fillet that was served with the same
lemon and butter sauce. Not sure that lemony beef would be good, we were
grateful that, like the fish and shrimp, it was lacking any real taste. However,
a stronger sauce could have helped in distracting us from the overcooked and
slightly tough meat.

For dessert,
we chose the tiramisu (15.99LE), and were pretty astonished at how slapdash it
was. The sponge ladyfingers were stale and the mascarpone was too thick and
devoid of any discernible taste. Not a great end.

Luckily we
had two of Yatsa’s creative cocktails to wash the taste away. The pink lady
(22LE) is a combination of banana, strawberry, lemon, coconut, milk and whipped
cream, making for a cluttered but pleasant taste. On the other hand, the rock
& roll was a bit of a shocker; pineapple, carrot, celery and arugula. The
brown creation was coarse and bitter; the arugula was drastically out of place.

Despite its
unique look, Yatsa has done little to convince this reviewer to return for a
second time. Bearing in mind the restaurant is still in its soft opening phase,
the standard of food is well below the standards of its neighbouring Pestle and Mortar or Casper & Gambini’s.