Fancypants To The Max At Intercontinental Cairo's Grill

The Grill at the Intercontinental Hotel Cairo is a terrifying place. Soft piano renditions of Frank Sinatra tunes played live on a baby grand, the transparent wine coolers in the walls, the breath-taking view of the Nile; it’s like a scientifically engineered environment to elicit a fight-or-flight response from a young white male whose idea of a fancy night out, up until this point, was any evening that required me to put pants on. 

 

No clothes that you could possibly own can make you feel like you're not grossly underdressed for this place. Even with the one respectable outfit I own (I even used the lint roller on it), I spent the evening scared someone would spot the elastic waistband of my collectors' edition boxers poking out that said DARTH VADER in big red letters and kick us out. 

 

The server led us to our table, which was positioned before the great big windows overlooking the Nile. This must be one of the most the most romantic settings for dinner in Cairo. This made it very easy to come up with elaborate noir-esqe storylines for the guy sitting by himself, chain-smoking cigarettes, sipping on an amber glass. I knew she would leave me, I just didn’t think she would try to kill me, too. 

At the table, the sever pulled out my chair and my unrefined mind was offended by his presumption that I was unaware of how a chair works. This led to a bit of a struggle when I sat and tried pull my chair up to the table. The confusion ended when I raised my hand and said, perhaps a little louder than I should have, “Dude, I got it!"

 

If life was a video game and everything you did was evaluated on a points system, taking your partner here would earn you 10,000 relationship points. That’s like an instant level up. 

 

A bottle of wine with a name I couldn’t pronounce came, followed by the appetizers. Sea scallops with bone marrow was the most heavy metal dish on the menu so, of course, I ordered it with horns held high. Actually, foie gras was the most brutal thing on the menu. We got that too. Who knew that force-feeding waterfowl until they literally died would make something so delicious. The French are sadistic.

 

The main courses - crunchy sea bass and farmer’s chicken with sautéed mushrooms and old mustard sauce - showed up on wispy clouds of fanciness propelled by the unfulfilled wishes of impoverished children. I’m not sure how a farmer’s chicken differs from any other chickens that were perhaps raised in factories, but this dish was a lot better than the chicken pane I had the other night. The sea bass was one of the best pieces of fish I’ve every had. The combined crunchiness of the outside with the melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness of the inside was impeccable. 

 

For dessert, my partner-in-fanciness and I ordered cappuccinos as well as a dark chocolate soufflé. We were warned ahead of time that the soufflé would take about 25 minutes, but thanks to the time dilation effect of the caffeine it seemed like no time at all. Having worked in my fair share of hipster cafés, I like to think that I know a thing or two about cappuccinos. A lot of places (not just in Egypt) make them really crappy. Often they are indistinguishable from their less foamy latte cousins, or the foamy bits are more liquid than the magic-state-of-matter-beyond-the-understanding-of-science they should be. The milk-to-espresso ratio was literally perfect, like some kind of barista fairy floated by on a the back of an over-caffeinated hummingbird.  

 

Now, the soufflé. I’m not usually a death-by-chocolate sort of guy because of the sheer decadence, but this rich delicacy is now my execution of choice.

 

If you make enough money to go to The Grill in the Intercontinental, you don’t need my recommendation. If not, you’ll have to save up for about a year to eat here as an entree alone is anywhere between 150-300 LE. It’s well worth it, however, if you need a spot for a special occasion.