Restaurant review: Capricious times Her face glowed like the stock market in better days A mess is a world in which good people cannot articulate their thoughts on common daily occurrences, like bombings and mayhem. These are things that are supposed to make us feel something, anything. And yet, people scratch their heads when a third of a hotel is blown asunder, like a bad marriage, on our eastern borders. We're lost for words. Why? Because both sides of the argument have been stolen by people no one in their right mind can agree with. If you condemn terror, you sound like Bush and Sharon and this alone will make me puke in my morning latte. And if you say hurrah freedom fighters, you'll sound like Al- Zarqawi and his Al-Qaeda mentors. So, most of my friends stared at TV screens and said "that's really bad." The remainder appeared on TV screens and echoed the same non-sentiment. Egypt is going to lose money on tourism, this was the best we came up with. Tourism! Money! We're going to be late on our mortgage payments! Tourism will drop by 6.5 per cent! What next? Are we going to march en masse to Al-Tahrir Square to demand an instant 0.75 per cent interest rate cut to make up for the economic downturn? I am sitting at Caprice, an avant-garde basement affair done in rustic, conservative colour scheme at Midan Amman in Mohandessin, thinking of Taba and worrying about the economy. Perhaps an interest rate cut is not such a bad idea. I am with the Brunette and her mom, waiting for the Designer to appear sometime before Ramadan. The Armenian has recommended this place. The Armenian knows a lot of cool places, for he has all the glossy magazines. He even gave me a CD of a glossy, touristic magazine that only appears in cyber space. Many things appear on cyber space these days, touristic and anti-touristic. For a moment, I think Caprice is a cyber figment of my imagination. I look around, and yes it is. It is a hot point, the Brunette points out, hotly. I look around again, and I can't feel the heat, but it is there somewhere. The café has a broad-band or wireless something that hooks you to the Internet if your laptop is so disposed, which mine (a museum piece aged three and half cyber-light years) is not. We get the coffees: espresso con-panna, Greek frappe, black magic frappe and something else. All taste great, a globalised taste, an airport-scented taste: coffee and cinnamon, the one last taste to unite the befuddled, globalised masses across the cosmic divide of terror and US policy. We're allowed to smoke, so long as the smoke doesn't blow into the Brunette's face, which is impossible. Her face is glowing with serenity these days, and I am not sure what she is up to, for this is the same look of serenity often noticed by blast survivors on a driver's face seconds before things get really smoky. The seating is comfortable, leather-padded and Scandinavian-style, lending itself to chatting, both on- and off-line. The father of the Greek-Lebanese owner was an engineer working at the High Dam in the 1960s -- a piece of information that mysteriously makes me long for clearer days of international schism. The Greek salad lacks lettuce (the owner's family has been here for a very long time) but is perfectly fresh and well-seasoned. My savoury crepe with tomato and mushroom is edible but not exciting. The quattro-fromagi tramezzino is properly applauded and devoured. (Tramezzino is a word the fascists invented, in a quest for linguistic purity, to replace the English word sandwich. It means, creatively enough, two slices of bread with something in between). Caprice, (02) 337 3525, 9 Midan Amman, Mohandessin, is open 11am to 2am daily. Globalised coffee with globalised Internet in globalised avant-garde ambiance. Dinner for four, LE160. By Nabil Shawkat
