The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

Despite receiving a rather average review last year, we still left Akli feeling that the restaurant’s range of sandwiches had some great ideas – especially since in makes for a great option for an office-lunch.

The variety of the sandwiches on the menu is quite decent; there are eight hot sandwiches, like breaded brain, chicken souvlaki and chicken fillet pane, as well as five cold sandwiches, including tuna avocado and smoked tongue. The menu also has a number of meals, including stuffed pigeon and veal stew.

Hoping for an improvement this time round, we opted for two combos; shrimp pane (70LE), Firebird (54LE) and a roast beef sandwich (42LE). As promised, our order arrived in 45 minutes and, pleasingly, the food was almost as hot as it would have been served in the restaurant.

The first item we tried was the shrimp pane sandwich. Despite its soft and light Viennoise bread and the well-cooked shrimps which had a fantastic crispy crust,  there was too little of all the ingredients, the capers were missing and the lemon mayo was just regular mayo. It was also poorly presented; it just didn’t look like the gourmet sandwich it promised to be.

We also felt shortchanged with the Firebird sandwich’s scant amount of its ingredients, though the braded chiken was perfectly crisp and the Firebird sauce added a great spicy kick.

Despite being basic and exactly how you’d expect it to be, there was plenty to like about the roast beef sandwich; the quality and the freshness of the veggies, the on-point amount of mayo, the cooked-to-perfection roast beef and the fact that it was generously filled, unlike the first two sandwiches. On the down side, there wasn’t quite enough cheese in the sandwich. As for the decently-portioned thick-cut fries, they were crispy on the outside and perfectly cooked on the inside.

We finished our meal with a Panna Cotta (15LE), which was creamy and super rich in flavours, despite its melted-cream-cheese-like texture, most probably caused by the hot weather.

Overall, we enjoyed our home delivered meal from Akli. The food and the quality of the ingredients were good, but it suffered from poor presentation, missing items in the shrimp sandwich and a general lack of fillings in the sandwiches.