Restaurant review: Breakfast at Boharita Sacks of grain litter the floor and condiments climb up the wall Two city rides are worth taking. One is the overland metro to Heliopolis, the other is the tram in Alexandria. Both lead to what I believe are the best planned urban areas in this country: Roxy of Cairo and Manshia of Alexandria. Both have a colonial quality and a pedestrian-friendly setting, with promenades and easy crossings. Not so Ramses Square, from which our journey begins. We descend from the taxi about 100 metres east of the square and head back. The urban planners of Ramses Square have decided that the only access to the metro should be from outer space. There is no way to reach the metro without climbing the green metal stairway that hovers over the square, and you have to walk forever to find the stairs. As if to reward you for your exertion, yellow lotus flowers are stuck to the tall grid barrier that boxes in the metro -- a touch of beauty that could only originate in a Decorate Cairo Committee made up of people with strong heads and knees. We are at the exterior garden of Boharita, surrounded by potted plants and sacks of grain. Inside the coffeehouse/restaurant, chilli pepper and weeds are framed on the walls for an earthy look. The Californian tells me that this ambiance is common in faux-rustic venues in America, the same way Italian restaurants keep huge pickle jars they never use on the shelves, the same way mother used to keep a tapestry showing Venetian settings on the wall, just under the florescent lighting. It all serves as a compass for lost minds. If you focus hard, you imagine you're in the countryside. If you focus harder still, you'll go back to the Middle Ages. I am focussing very hard these days, apparently, for Cairo seems like a distillation of both the countryside and the Middle Ages, and not just visually. I had come with the Californian to the opening of this venue a fortnight ago and tasted some of the food. What brought us back was the coffee. The two servings of coffee we had at the opening were strong and aromatic. Alas, this day, the coffee is weak. We order again, getting a cappuccino with two servings of espresso, then another with three, but still cannot recapture the moment, the mix of smell and taste that defines modern pleasure. The food is convincing though. The eggs and smoked salmon roll is delicious, creamy and dreamy, like a world of complete harmony, like a perfect democracy in which the fundamentalists compete for power but never win, in which the intellectuals can write to their hearts' pleasure and sell their published work, all 70 copies of it, without hell, literally, being raised. The eggs with sumac is pronounced acceptable. But the winner is the Egyptian breakfast combo, which comes with elongated felafel, fresh crushed fuul, home-made labna (strained yoghurt), salad and fresh pickles. Had the bread been baked on site, it would've been perfection. The walls are coated with artificial stone and the sun- bathed verandah looks like a castle entry gate, minus the moat and the draw-bridge. The chairs are in thick wood with off-white cushions. Of the two spacious floors, only the air-conditioned bottom one is furnished for now. The tables are low, all of them, which is puzzling. The dish of the day is a favourite of mine, fatta bel kawarea (boiled calf knuckles served with bread and rice mix flavoured with garlic and vinegar). It is too early in the day for calf knuckles, I think. But had the time been right, I could have easily embarrassed myself trying to handle this delicious, gooey, dripping meal from knee level. Boharita, tel: (02) 451 1504, 19 Botros Ghali Street, across from Cinema Heliopolis, Heliopolis, open 8am to 2am, offers Egyptian-Syrian cuisine in a designer-rustic ambiance. Alcohol not available. Breakfast for four, LE140. By Nabil Shawkat
