Restaurant review: Lackadaisical Lebanese Gamal Nkrumah on the trail of the Lebanese cuisine experience-seekers I am not sure what to expect but the Lebanese buffet at the Nile Hotel's Ibis Café turns out to be elegant in an understated way. The general feeling of airiness and space suit the refinement of the restaurant. This is a place to come. Lebanese Chef Nidal Daw provides us with the best tabouleh, parsley and burghul (cracked wheat) salad I've yet tasted outside Lebanon. He hands me a crisp lettuce leaf. "In Lebanon we scoop the tabouleh with lettuce." The leviathan of Lebanese cuisine, after all, can be rather intimidating. After a stint in Dubai he concluded that Cairo is where his pied a terre should be. Daw sat at our table, the picture of youth, exuberance and fulfilment. In sharp contrast, a charged lassitude descended upon the diners as they examined the delicacies on offer. On closer inspection of the sumptuous repast the restaurant became full of life and laughter. Ravenous now, my companions -- two lovely ladies -- and I trailed behind Daw to the hors d'oeuvre section of the buffet. He glowed with love and pride as we sampled his handiwork. If tabouleh is the queen of Lebanese salads, then fattoush (lettuce, fresh mint, tomatoes and toasted bread salad) is king. Baba ghanouj, char-grilled aubergines, always tastes better the smoky Lebanese way. And, so does Dawoud Pasha, meatballs that in Lebanon are doused with pomegranate thickened juice, and sprinkled with cinnamon and dried mint. Daw picked a sanbousak, meat pattie, insisting that I "taste the difference". He instinctively tweaked the plump pattie with his thumb and index finger. Snobar, or pine nuts, give Lebanese dishes a distinctive flavour. The nourishing nuts are used extensively in Levantine cuisine. Then he ushered us towards the main dishes. Lahme be ajeen (literally meat and dough) a delectable meaty dish served hot with yoghurt was beyond reproach. The baked kebbeh was too rich for my taste. Daw pressed me to sample an inviting morsel. "Are there any facilities you wouldn't live without?" I ventured. "A kitchen and cooking utensils," came a laconic answer. "What attracted you to cooking?" Laban isn't milk in Lebanese colloquial Arabic, it's yoghurt. We joke about differences between Cairene and Lebanese accents. "Where do you find inspiration?" He mulled the issue over in his mind, and then in a studied manner he said "my mother". He conceded that when in Lebanon, his mother doesn't allow him to enter the kitchen. "She does all the cooking herself," he chuckled uproariously. "I don't even prepare the salads." I imagined her to be a portly matriarch dressed in black, with fine features and a shrill voice. I kept my thoughts to myself. She must have taught him a thing or two about Lebanese cuisine. Certain Lebanese dishes seem unpalatable to the Egyptian taste, and Daw is careful to avoid them at all costs. Laban bil bayd, eggs in a garlicky yoghurt sauce is one such dish. Bayd bil koussa, eggs with courgette, is another. However, the samakeh harrah Traboulsiyeh, the fiery hot fish of the northern Lebanese port city of Tripoli, is popular among Daw's Egyptian clients. And, so is the kobebah samakeyah, spicy Lebanese fish cakes. "But there is no kebbeh nayyeh [raw ground meat]," I exclaimed. This particular Lebanese delicacy is especially difficult to perfect. It must be prepared using the freshest of ingredients, preferably pure lean lamb, onions, salt and pepper as well as a precise measure of burghul. Meat must predominate otherwise the dish is considered defective and disagreeable. Daw shrugged. Then with a wry, derisory smile, he stressed that in Egypt he never prepares raw kebbeh. "Only in Lebanon do I ground the flesh of freshly slaughtered animals," and the bantering note went out of his voice. My companions were drinking this in, wide-eyed. One, a writer, was frenetically jotting down notes. Bombarded with questions, Daw soon grew impatient with the interrogation and politely led us to the dessert corner of the buffet. Soon he began to steal anxious glances at his watch. Ibis Café, the Nile Hotel 1113 Corniche Al-Nile, Cairo Tel: 2578 0444 Open buffet: LE120 per person
