Br/Fr/ CAIRO /Bs.As.: Cairo Kitchen

So both last night and tonight, a friend and I had an amazing culinary experience (twice) at the Cairo Kitchen restaurant in Zamalek. ( blog.cairokitchen.com ) One of the best places I've been to in Cairo. Their food –with koshary, salads, soups, desserts and traditional drinks– simply blew our minds.

Food
Let's start with the best part, the salad bar. Health-freaks and vegetarians will love this. You can choose from about a dozen different in-season vegetable/salad pickings (changes every day) such as balady salad, beets, humus, babaganoug, salad, cauliflower, stuffed peppers, etc... Every one of which was fresh, delicious, and beautiful. This by far was the best part because every item tasted amazing; switching from delicious flavor to delicious flavor makes for an amazingly varied experience. Every time you bite into a different crudité, your mouth explodes again and again with awe. and all of this for a very reasonable price.

We tried the 'Healthy Being' koshary and the regular koshary both which were nice. Not quite as mouth watering as the salads, but still a very decent koshary. Each table has a special, fresh hot sauce (very hot, possibly with a hint of carrot in it) and garlic sauce. Koshary served in classic metal bowls with covers and big handles.

Portions were also very generous: after a small bowl of salads, we could only finish a little more than half of our small-sized bowl of Koshary.

I need to go back to try the soups, desserts (my friend said they're great), and other kinds of koshary and salads.

Drinks
Cairo Kitchen offers a large variety of traditional Egyptian drinks. Hibiscus, citrus mint rosewater, lemon. For 8 L.E. you get unlimited refills of any of them. All very good.

Decor
The decoration is amazing. I think the idea is to mimic the warm colorful style of traditional fuul street carts. While very colorful, it's not at all tacky. Rather charming. The whole place was spotlessly clean. The bathroom was spacious and clean.

Service
Right from the beginning, a waiter opens the door for you, and all the waiters are friendly (you get the feeling their actually being paid a decent wage), welcoming, but not too much as can often be the case in other restaurants. They did a meticulous job at serving the food in a very presentable way. Even though things are rather straightforward as far as the menu is concerned, they were very helpful with our questions.
Non-smoking, (enforced) although you can go outside on their large sidewalk for a cigarette.
Children/Family-friendly (two boys sitting with their parents received free plastic Cairo Kitchen watches, they were also very pleased with their experience there).
You can ask for a free Cairo Kitchen sticker.
I've heard that they have cooking classes which are very fun and educational.

Overall, Cairo Kitchen is an awesome experience and I look forward to going back there very often (hoping that they don't reduce the quality as they begin to get a good reputation).

It feels like the owners took a good hard look at everything that was wrong with other restaurants (even the better ones) and made sure to get theirs just right. :-)