You just got home. You’re tired after an hour of ruthless Cairo traffic, and you have friends coming over for dinner. You’d like a decent seafood meal but you don’t have the energy to cook. What to do? Enter Fandira, a specialty fish takeout and delivery venue that produces delicious seafood with a contemporary edge.
Promising “freshelicious seafood delivery,” Fandira is located on the ground floor of an inconspicuous building on Road 4, Maadi. Intended as a takeout and delivery outlet, Fandira is impeccably clean and well ventilated; lacking that fishy smell usually associated with your regular baladi fishmonger. The venue has a sole wooden table for you to wait at while your order is being prepared; though you may end up eating it all up right there once you get a waft of your delectable order.
Aside from traditional Egyptian seafood meals such as fried calamari with sayadeya rice (LE 22) and red snapper (LE 78 per kg), Fandira offers classy fish dishes, such as roasted salmon steak, mixed seafood in a Thai red curry with rice (LE 40), and Thai fried rice with shrimps (LE 18).
You can order your fish by the kilo and choose the style of cooking from the traditional grilled with radda option to the salmoriglio marinade. The outlet also offers soups, appetizers and salads, as well as three special sauces to dip the sumptuously crunchy fried shrimp and calamari (LE 60) into: shrimp cocktail, lemon butter and tartar (LE 2 per container).
While we’ve heard rave reviews about Fandira’s sandwiches — the fried shrimp with tartar dressing and the Mexican shrimp (LE 25 each) are also strongly recommended — this venue’s forte is in its specialty meals.
The scallops wrapped in beef bacon with mushrooms and peas ragout (LE 80) are served with a side of steamed basmati rice. The scallops are fresh, appropriately juicy and contrast very nicely with the crunch of the beef bacon, though they work just as well without it. The mushrooms and peas ragout provides a smooth and creamy sauce to emphasize the scallops’ taste.
The stir-fried prawns (LE 40) had us licking our fingers with delight: drenched in a sweet garlic pepper sauce, the prawns are cooked perfectly with a side of steamed rice.
Any fish connoisseur worth their grain in salt can probably attest to how difficult it is to find a perfect salmon steak in Cairo. While most restaurants in this city tend to overcook it to the point of tears, Fandira’s salmon steak (LE 60) is grilled to the point of pink perfection with the skin still on one side, thus retaining the substantial juice and flavor of the fish. A side of basil mashed potatoes and spinach, and a very delicate cream brushing on the steak match the salmon’s flavor nicely without overpowering it.
Fandira’s soya glazed tuna steak (LE 80) comes with tangy-sweet and grilled eggplant, and the optional addition of orange to the marinade. Like salmon, tuna is very easily overcooked; yet here at Fandira, the steak keeps its pink color and thus its flavor.
A testament to the quality of fish is how edible it is a few hours later. Fandira’s flavors are still spot-on one day later, a good sign that this is a quality source of fish delivery; which shouldn’t be surprising considering that one of the venue’s partners is a Four Seasons chef.
Best bit
Fandira provides fresh fish, great flavors and quality recipes by a Four Seasons chef.
Worst bit
Fandira only delivers in Maadi for the time being.
360 Tip
The menu is very flexible; so you can ask for an ingredient to be added or removed to your liking
Address: 10, Road 4, next to German Nursery, Ground Floor, Maadi, Cairo.
Telephone: 0107272513
Open: 12 pm-12am
This article was contributed to Daily News Egypt by Cairo 360 http://www.cairo360.com/
