Restaurant review: Nook of time And I know the number of the sands This time there is no escape. The Brunette kept insisting and I kept stalling. The Palermo Firemen Council needs me to smooth out things with an incorruptible mayor, I would say. The Pan-Arab Metal Builders Syndicate wants me to vet a 90-metre high stained-glass window in Dubai. My extrasensory paranormal goggles will be delivered anytime now. All good excuses, some partly true, but finally you run out. So I am in front of that shopping mall in Maadi, waiting for the Brunette and the Intellectual to get out and show me their newly acquired Chinese car. The car smells of plastic and varnish. I smell it and think of my next line of eau de cologne. "On Wheels", I will call it. Perhaps I should market it while in Dubai for the next "Fight Global Warming: Air Condition the Desert" summit. We're lost, again. I am lost in my dreams of a manageable, wall-to-wall carpeted world, with all vegetation in doors and oceans tiled in ceramics, a world you can review in Universal Architectural Digest and make other galaxies envious, a world the Martians can only have if they pay Earthling Global intellectual property rights, in advance and through my firm. The Intellectual, at the wheel, has driven half the distance to England, but is still doing circles in Maadi. The streets in this southern suburb are numbered: 246, 192, 15. It's supposed to help, but doesn't. We find it at last, an English place with the Union Jack to prove it. The Nook has five tables or so. Two mirrors face each other on the walls, with common British bar posters scattered about, bearing advice on how to treat you ex-wife and get along with the neighbour's sheep. The place has opened five years ago but, with its sober décor and conservative menu, it manages to create a sense of timelessness. You can get jacket potatoes with eight different toppings on them, and you can get a ploughman, though I do most of my ploughing with machines. We start with green salads and an edible minestrone soup. This is followed by roast beef, roast lamb, and Tournedos Rossini. All the main courses arrive in generous portions, with side servings of fried potatoes (in big chunks), broccoli (steamed) and carrots (somewhere between steamed and raw). The food is basic British fare, not better or worse than any in similar establishments around the world. If you come in the morning, you can have the full English breakfast experience (bacon, eggs, sausage, beans). For dessert, we order a bread pudding, which turns out to be a gritty darkened pastry covered with your choice of custard or ice cream. It was here, in this little English island in the middle of nowhere, that the curtain finally fell on my career as a culinary columnist. In the brave company of the Brunette, the Californian, the Intellectual, and the Muse, among others, I set out, weeks and weeks ago, in search for known and obscure cuisine, from the ruins of Thebes to the outposts of the Red Sea, and must say that the journey was as good as the edibles. Years ago, the oracle of Delphi saw it all coming. Speaking in hexameters, she said, "and I know the number of the sands and the dimensions of the sea, and I understand the mute and hear those who do not speak, into my brain dwells the strong- shelled tortoise, seething in bronze with the flesh of lamb, bronze spread beneath it and covered with bronze above." A bit bizarre, for she doesn't mention the sauce. It could've been tarragon sauce, but if you don't have that, use oregano, or nutmeg. I like her brain. I really do. It's the best brain I ever had. The Nook, (02) 519 7655, 21 Road 254 Digla, Maadi, open 10am-10pm daily, offers credible English cuisine in a cozy, understated ambiance. Alcohol available. Dinner for three, LE250. photo: Nabil Shawkat By Nabil Shawkat
