Restaurant review: Pooh and the Paycock Don't let the allure of the Orient cast its spell on you, cautions Gamal Nkrumah Reading the trackless menu as if it's been drawled into a tape recorder after a bowl of rice wine or two, the buxom Chinese demoiselle in a shocking pink headscarf recited in Mandarin, presumably, a long list of edible options. "Feces?" "No. Lamb," I blurted out perplexed. "Season Dipping Sauce Pigeon?" she squealed, lending a new layer to an already nauseating lunch. "Korean style tofu skin?" My companion spat out her cold glass noodles. "Don't let the intimidating menu put you off," I whispered in disdain. The menu read like a coffee table book to die from. My companion wrapped the inedible noodle phlegm in a piece of toilet paper and shoved it under the table. As in a horrific Hitchcock film, the pink clad waitress reappeared flushed with a heady mix of emotions. Perhaps she was peeved that I couldn't figure out that she was a prostitute under the guise of a pink veil. "Yes, I am a Muslim," she stuttered. And, her bareheaded coadjutor furiously fluttered her eyelashes in agreement. The dubious duo blurred artistic and commercial lines. Clothed with her own wildly imaginative wardrobe, she mimicked a manacled heifer. "Moo," she cheeped, or rather hooted, her rose-pink robes spewing out a great whirl of cheap glitter. This was an exercise in panic management. "Marinated chick gizzard?" Perhaps it was the perfect antidote to stomach ache. "Poisonous pooh." I peered into the menu, scowling at the scrawled introduction in Chinese characters. "Stone Pots Mixed Rice?" Potty if you ask me. "Omelet Steamed Meat Shrimp?" Presumably shrimp? Certainly not. Not so much rant as aberration, my companion's staggering contemplation on the vastness of the menu loomed large. There is a Korean menu and a Chinese menu, but Confucius rubs off on her. "Over there, even fact metamorphoses into fiction." But often it is bombastic and longwinded. "Spiced Salt Chicken Thread?" What on earth could that possibly be? The question to provoke a thousand musings was whether or not this was a brothel. I just thought, sitting in the rusty red restaurant dressed in professorial crumpled shirt and corduroy trousers. "This falls between a regular restaurant and a whorehouse. There is a dainty Oriental maitre d' and Maadi men get hit hard," my companion mused. "Except that it is eerily empty and the food is revolting," I answered absent-mindedly. For my companion, it is clear that the lines will continue to blur. She is one of those writers who reflect longer and more carefully about little things. "The soup pungs, pooh." These are lively observations, but by no stretch is this unfortunate encounter with Chinese damsels in distress going to end on an upbeat note. "Let us go home and have a boiled egg," my companion pleaded. "Homemake Small Fish?" The waitress in pink beckoned. I suspect that she deliberately pronounces fish as feces. "Fried Big Shrimp Meats Ball?" "I've had enough of this farce. Let's get the bill," my companion shrieked. "Pooh!" After a flirtation between soup and stew, sizzling barbecue and dumpling, we rose to leave, avoiding the existential question of whether this in fact is a restaurant or a hideaway for Maadi's Asian ladies of the night. Oriental Jezebel returns smiling from ear to ear. The mutton platter was piled improbably high, the beef tongue fizzes blandly on the palate and only the muffled giggles of the girls in the kitchen disturb the peace. Surely this is not enough to entice the crowds of hungry Cairenes. Aroused men, maybe. The restaurant lies at the end of a long series of tree-lined back streets in Digla and at first glance it looks like a place you can pay to have your every wish catered for. It has the air of a cabaret rather than a café. Alas this restaurant is no leitmotif. You can watch the waitresses lolloping between the tables, and the lanterns are a brilliant ruby red. Still, it is no place to discuss local politics. She slips into a dream-like state. "I'm sick of trying to force Chinese delicacies on you, and you spitting it out behind my back," I faintly hear her say. Chinese & Korean Restaurant Street 231, Maadi, Cairo Tel: 018 004 0788 Lunch for two: LE200
