Restaurant review: Inside a red onion Some people can spot intellectuals anywhere, even in the dark I have a quiz for you, or at least for those who still frequent the downtown area. How many trees are on Talaat Harb Square? The answer is at the bottom of this article. If your answer is correct, the chances are you're a disturbed person travelling down a dangerous path and likely to be hit soon by a car. For who in their right mind would pick this empty, meaningless detail from amid a veritable jungle of human sensations? There is a bearded, robed man with a loudspeaker who has been collecting donations for mosques on the eastern side of the square since the beginning of time. Occasionally, he would spot a good-looking foreign woman and greet her with a crisp, tender Hello, then turn back to the business of helping heaven get a foothold on earth, amid earthlings who cannot get a foothold on the sidewalk. Another man has been trying to sell papyrus drawings across the square for 15 years, and is rumoured to have sold three. And there are those who offer you prizes, once you scratch the paper they push in your face. If the prize- pushers are a single file, you're on the left side of Talaat Harb going to Tahrir. If they are a gauntlet, you're on the wider, right side. I run the gauntlet to take the metro going to Maadi. The friend I am meeting doesn't know the way to the place we're going, nor do I. But I know where the train is going, in this life and the one after. The route, to both, is clearly marked at the top of every door and around it. Another quiz: how many doors does a metro coach have? The answer is: enough to accommodate 37 computer-generated religiously- inclined stickers distributed in groups of four to five per door. Initially a secular and public mode of transportation, the metro is acquiring a divine touch, laminated on one side, glued on the other. We cannot find the Red Onion. My friend informs the taxi driver that the establishment's name means basala hamra in Arabic, as if this information can get us there faster. Even as we're two or three blocks away, a flower shop and two civilians are still unaware of the Red Onion's existence. In a dark residential street, the driver spots three 20-something men in designer T- shirts getting into a 1999 Toyota sedan, asks them for directions, and gets the right answer. "The intellectuals always know, not the other guys," the driver tells us, evidently proud of his particular knack to spot intellectuals in the dark. I, for one, can only spot intellectuals in reasonable lighting, and the Red Onion is almost well lit. The intelligentsia we encounter inside congregates mostly in the high-seating bar section of the faux-retro establishment, rather than in the restaurant section with the easy seating. The walls are honey-hued, subdued and soothing. The farthest wall is exposed to show the original (just kidding) stone walls. Feeling suddenly insecure about our intellectual credentials, we phone for help. A left-leaning friend who lives nearby arrives in an authentic Stop Bush T-shirt, imported fresh from the US. Her outfit runs politically correct circles around my befuddled, locally purchased, Hawaiian shirt, on which the flowers begin to wilt. I am green with envy, green and crushed just as the besara (crushed beans with herbs) we're eating, the besara I am thinking of dropping on her lap. I don't, for she is the type of person who may react to such sartorial comment by kick-starting the green movement in Maadi and upsetting the tenuous ecological commerciality of this city. Besides, this is the best besara I've had in months. The breaded chicken-wings soar onto heavens of finger-food delicacy. The chicken liver is where my heart is. And the salad platter is round and colourful and almost as big as Talaat Harb Square (22 trees). Red Onion, New Maadi, close to Cinema Fontana, intersection of roads 276 and 258, (02) 520 0240, is open noon to 1am daily. Superb bar food in a rustic atmosphere. Three alcoholic drinks and six appetisers, LE150. By Nabil Shawkat
