Eating food that I relatively couldn’t identify was a first for me.
On the last Thursday of Ramadan, friends and I agreed that it was about time to test the recommendations we had been getting about a restaurant run by the Uighur region of China.
Uighur is a predominantly Muslim region of China, and the cuisine there is free of pork, typically unusual for Chinese cuisine. It also offers various dishes typical of Chinese cuisine, relying on a lot of spice — a surprising punch of chili spice when least expected.
Among the Abbaseya residents are many foreign Muslim students of Al-Azhar University. These small restaurants offer a source of income for the expatriate student body and delicious cheap meals for both the Asian student community and their Egyptian peers. Indonesian female students were breaking their fast there and an Egyptian student was speaking in a rapid Chinese dialect to his colleague.
We found the restaurant easily enough with some directions off of Salah Salem and one road away from the Taki Mattress factory in a short building. A sign in both Chinese characters and English script announced “Chinese Restaurant” and a few plastic tables and chairs were set outside. Nothing else indicated that a heavenly noodle soup awaited us.
The restaurant is run by a group of young men. With shy smiles and an endearing demeanor, they managed to arrange seats for eight around one table and promptly set down some lukewarm Chinese tea served in large plastic pitchers. Strangely enough, it wasn’t an all-together bad choice to break our fast with and the fairly generous amount kept us going until we were finally served our order an hour later.
One of my friends, a Frenchman, wasn’t pleased with the sub-basic dining standards, but we were all quite excited and famished when our order was set down. We weren’t quite sure what we had ordered. Communication was a bit difficult because of the waiter’s broken Arabic and the lack of either Arabic or English descriptions accompanying the food on the menu.
Ah yes, the menu: a picture album with about 80 different photos of salads, chicken, meat, tofu, rice, noodles and soup dishes on offer. Could we perhaps try to understand the differences between that beef dish and the other beef dish preceding it in the album? Perhaps not. My advice is to point at whatever looks tastiest. We decided to share an order of tofu, two noodles in soup, a cucumber salad dish and a meat dish.
For the first time as a food critic, I cannot provide an exact description of what was in my food and what I ate, but all I can tell you is that the food, which arrived after a long arduous wait (mind you we were fasting an extra hour), was certainly authentically Chinese.
I was told that the noodles were made fresh on premises and that a woman in the Chinese community made the tofu herself. Though I couldn’t verify this from the young men, I’m willing to bet there’s truth to the rumor. The noodles came down as long thick ribbons with no strange taste of preservatives. Soft, satiny, they practically melted in my mouth as I slurped head over bowl as is polite and as the Chinese do. The plate of tofu was passed around and shared, finishing up too quickly causing us to order another large order.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to try and share several dishes, and although portion sizes are quite generous, food comes down as a small mountain on the plate. It’s tricky sharing soup, and so it’s absolutely worth ordering two salads or so to share a plate of tofu. A main dish is sufficient for each person whether it’s dry noodles in a sort of stir fry or else spicy noodles in a soup.
The cucumber salad was fresh; the dressing was both zesty and sweet. A meat dish served on rice was very spicy but also a lingering taste of something sweet remained afterward and the piece de la resistance was undoubtedly the tofu.
Tofu is typically hard to cook well and when using store bought tofu, it’s hard to ignore that heavy after taste of egg and chemical preservative of sorts. This tofu came down soft, slightly crisp around the edges, spiced with some cooked peppers.
After continuously eating for a good half-hour, we stopped, satisfied and the young man was eager to hear our verdict. “Kwayes?” he asked.
It was more than simply good; it was “hayel,” excellent.
Perhaps it was a new word for him to learn judging by his puzzled but polite expression. We ordered the bill and collectively, for tea, eight various dishes, several rounds of soft drinks, it came to LE 114, we each paid 20.
“The best value for money,” a friend announced when ordering a meal.
Don’t go hungry, the smell wafting from the modest kitchen upstairs will get you hungry and service is slow but is certainly worth trying out. The restaurant is open every day from 6-10 pm except for Mondays.
To get there: Ask for directions to Ahmed Said street, right next to the Taki factory. From there, enter the street right across from the factory past the Water Club (Nadi Miyah Al-Qahirah). When you get to a tall apartment building, take a right. The restaurant will be on the left.
The noodles, which some say are made fresh, came down as long thick ribbons with no strange taste of preservatives.
