Spring is just around the corner in Cairo. Nothing compares to a sunset lunch over the Nile. Spending the weekend, enjoying the softest of breezes coming off the Nile with a surrounding Nile background just complements the joy of your day off.
At Nile Point, one of Maadi’s venues where a series of Cairo’s finest restaurants are chained together, Daily News Egypt paid a visit to newly-opened Tavola restaurant.
Tavola restaurant is famous for serving chicken and pasta dishes. Its first ever Egyptian branch opened in Fifth Settlement, New Cairo, and only a few months later, another two branches opened in Maadi and Sheikh Zayed.
The place is designed in a modern style, with the dominating colours of blue and grey giving an embracing and welcoming feel.
The service quality is one of the most remarkable hallmarks of Tavola, where waiters are at your constant service; they are constantly asking if customers need anything and the manager himself goes around checking on tables.
In fact, Tavola’s cordial welcome went beyond our expectations. We ordered a classic mix of Tavola samplers as appetisers. The large plate came with a mix of chicken strips, fish fingers, calamari, baked potato covered with minced beef and cheese, crispy sticks, mozzarella sticks, and mushrooms with tomatoes. The large plate was served with four mouth-watering dips: honey mustard, chili marinara sauce, blue cheese, and mayonnaise with chopped pickles.
The team had never tasted something quite like it at any restaurant. The chicken was well-cooked and delicious; however, it could have been better spiced. Crunchy from the outside and tender from inside, the strips were good yet lacked seasoning, just like all the other dishes as we later found out.
While the dips added a unique taste to all the food, there was no tinge of seasoning such as salt or pepper in the food, something we found missing in almost all the served dishes.
The worst of the appetisers were the fish fingers and the calamari. The strong scent of the fish overwhelmed the overall taste, and not in a good way, leaving no room for the taste of the fish and calamari to show.
As for the main meal, we ordered a dish of chicken basil, made of a charbroiled chicken covered with smoked turkey sauce and stuffed with basil. We also ordered chicken bologna, a dish made of fried chicken breast covered with marinara sauce and green mozzarella.
Besides that, we ordered chicken with penne sauce, with sides of French fries and mashed potatoes that tasted good.
Truth be told, the main dishes were a bit disappointing to us. The fried chicken was overfired and slightly burned, leaving the chicken with a bitter taste. Despite being extremely crunchy, the lack of seasoning left the chicken tasteless. If not for the marinara sauce, it would have been quite appalling.
The grilled chicken was somewhat better; the creamy taste was sharp and tasty, the chicken was well-cooked, and the grilling taste was strongly pronounced and appealing.
It would have been better if the chicken was marinated in the seasoning for a longer time before being grilled. The taste of basil was strong, yet somehow did not go along with the smoked cream sauce well.
The mashed potatoes were also served with sliced onions, which is an unfamiliar addition which was a great treat for onion enthusiasts.
It was budget-friendly for almost any class of customer, with dishes ranging from EGP 100-350.
