Restaurant review: Seafood massacre Between a rock and a fish place Every once in a while a fantasy will haunt me. It involves a table, upon which are laid platter after platter of all kinds of seafood, cooked in different ways, sitting before me in bountiful mountains: the colours, smells and flavours of the sea. When this fantasy strikes, it gnaws, and only goes away when fulfilled. I don't know if it was visible on me the night my father suggested we go dine at one of his favourite seafood restaurants for years: Zephyr. The suggestion was met with unanimous applause. The restaurant has been around for ages, and is frequented by the crème de la crème of Alexandrine society (judging by the cars parked, the sunglasses, the shoe heels of the ladies and the general demeanour of the clientele), despite its location in one of the more "underprivileged" fishing districts of the coastal city, Al-Max. Among the shanty buildings, right on the Corniche and overlooking a tiny sandy bay -- where you can teach your little ones the art of ricocheting stones on the golden surface of the water by sunset while the food arrives -- stands the seafood institution known to all as "Zefer". We went to pick our live food, as crustaceans still waved their legs in the air and shells spat sea water from tubs. Making up one's mind is extremely difficult when faced with such a bounty of fresh goodies, so we basically just agreed to every suggestion the ma"tre d' was kind enough to make. Salads came right away, and these are a "standard" selection that graces every table in the form of about a dozen little options, including herring caviar paste, tehina with tomato salsa, shrimp kishk, and spicy clams, while the bread arrived puffy, soft, and burning hot from the oven. It was simply a grand opening to a meal that promised to be even grander, we concluded as we attacked and conquered those sampling delights. For the little one, tender fish kebabs came grilled on a skewer with red and yellow capsicum dividers, which he devoured along with his rice covered in baby shrimps and fried onions. His mommy though, had a larger affair to handle: a grilled red grouper, which was so well seasoned even his fork found its curious way to the white morsels. The grouper was large and filling, its pinkish skin crispy and inviting -- never forget to nibble on the crunchy tail and fins -- while its meaty chunks melted in the mouth. What made the experience even more interesting was the alternating flavours of the grouper and the sardines we ordered grilled in lemon and oil. Those sardines were probably the pièce de resistance of our meal: small yet fleshy, they served as intra-meal amuse-gueules that spiced up the palate with their distinctively sharp fishy flavour. Personally, and though it initially raised my family's eye brows, I simply picked them off the platter by the tale, snapped the head off and ate the meat in successive quick bites which left a few backbones clean on my plate and an innocent look on my face. But if you think that is all, you are sorely mistaken -- we had a seafood massacre that fateful day -- for there was a large platter of sautéed clams in butter, and half a kilo of fried calamari that we finished off while ranting about the delicious meal we had just hoovered in the past hour. Those clams worked like a miracle to dissipate our sense of gluttony. Their bite-size was all the persuasion we needed to convince ourselves that we had not overdone it, that we had, actually, been pretty reasonable. The next time you visit Alexandria, it would be a sin not to head to Zephyr, in its picturesque locale perched up on the rocks above the Mediterranean. And, should you find your sweet tooth begging for attention, a wonderful ending to the meal could be a morsel of asaleyya (dried molasses) to chew on, as it is prepared before your very eyes on a little cart that adds a festive mood to this restaurant named after the gentle breeze of the west wind. Zephyr Al-Max Alexandria Killer fish meal for five: LE300 By Injy El-Kashef
