What a coincidence!

By Injy El-Kashef
The Egyptian saying about how many a coincidence is better than 1,000 appointments never seemed so true to me as last Wednesday night. My husband and I went to Al-Salam Hotel to have sohour only to discover that the tent set up for the purpose had been cancelled on account of the rain. What to do? Well, have regular dinner, of course. The Silk Road was the first restaurant we took notice of. We took a peep and, in a flash, were sitting at a table with menus in our hands. Before anything I ordered a sweet lassi, giving the impression that I knew my Indian cuisine like the back of my hand.
Lest I forget, let's just say that, at an Indian restaurant, any item bearing the word "spicy" should be avoided like the plague. Trust me. It's like eating dynamite. Unfortunately, I'd forgotten that small detail and so ordered a Spicy Thai Chicken and Coconut Soup. Oh my God! With the first spoonful my eardrums exploded, my nose ran at full speed, and it seemed to me that my curly hair had gone dead straight by the sheer heat emanating from my ears.
My husband looked at me, paused, and asked: "Injy, are you OK?" He had to repeat it a few times as he gently took my soup bowl from in front of me. He had a Gosht Yakhni Shorba (extract of mutton), which he found absolutely delightful. While I was slowly coming to, our appetiser (Thai shrimp cakes with sweet chili sauce) showed up. These are delicious little things that you dip in two sauces. One of them is red, with chili. Ignore it: it is the "s" word. The other is benign and very tasty.
When you go to Silk Road you'll see why we ordered the Kashmiri Pulao (fried rice with nuts). Simple: other types cost as much as LE50 a bowl. With the rice we had two types of bread (Paratha and Naan) to accompany our main dishes. So far everything had been great, but the main dishes... were even greater. Superb. Fantastic. We'll leave the best for last, so I'll start with the Kaeng Waan Nena (Thai beef curry with red and green chili). In a nutshell, it produces the same sensation as a strong, hot shower after a bad day at work. It is creamy, rich, with an almost sweet sauce bathing tender pieces of lean meat, spiced to perfection. As for the Dal Gee Dung Woo (scallops and shrimps with mushrooms), it feels like a scented bath with iced grapes and champagne, the kind one seldom takes alone. Huge shrimps and juicy scallops with a generous amount of oyster, shiitake and dry mushrooms (a kilo of shiitake often reaches LE1,400).
It isn't just the food that's perfect; the restaurant itself epitomises the chic and comfort that one often craves. For dessert we had banana fritters and washed it all down with Masala tea (with ginger and cardamom). It was over: the end of a splendid dinner cooked by Indian chefs and co-enjoyed by an exclusively Indian clientele. It was time to start worrying about what my soup was going to do next -- what goes in eventually comes out, even if it did cost LE198.
The Silk Road, Al-Salam Swissôtel, Abdel-Hamid Badawi St., Heliopolis.
Tel: 2974000
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg