If only we could

A day before we left Cairo for home, we visited a fish market. The Egyptians always have a warm welcome for their visitors and that was exactly what we got from Omar Sadic, sales manager for Cairo of Red Sea World Quality Supplies. Red Sea is one of the biggest suppliers of fresh catch, frozen meat, etc., both local (from the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and Suez) and imported (from New Zealand mostly). The Cairo outlet is located on El Falaki street, off Tahrir Square in Souk (Market) Babalouk, near the Cairo Museum. The smell of sea water and fish greeted us as we made our way through the narrow side street. On a busy day, one meets all the "kings" of the international hotel kitchens grabbing at their choices. As we entered the refrigerated room we were given white robes to wear, so we don’t smell like fish when we went out. We were in awe at what we saw and if we could only take home some of it, we’d be singing a very happy tune in our own kitchen.

There are four types of garoupa (lapu-lapu), the best being 111, because it has three stripes on its cheeks. Seabass comes as big as more than two feet long! Crabs include the rare blue and are mostly male since they have more flesh. Halibut and salmon are imported. Squid is white without the ink. Ulangs are nearly half a foot long. Boulty is our tilapia; dorak, our salinyasi (but much bigger) and boury is our banak. This was our first time (really) to see a newly-caught octopus. It was huge and looked awful, but our Chef suggests that this should be cut into pieces, boiled until tender, then seasoned for a flavorful dish. Name the seafood and they have it, including lobsters, sardines, tuna and some others we could not recognize. Quality control is strictly practiced here because the Health Inspectors conduct unscheduled and unannounced visits.

For dinner, we went to Nile City, a boat docked on the Nile in the Zamalek district, where various restaurants serve diners amid the cool breeze and colorful view of the city. Among them are Chili’s (much like what we have here), Johnny Carino’s (Italian with the landmark Tower of Pisa replica), Alain Le Norte (pastry) Provence and Seafood Market. The ambiance is New Orleans with each restaurant identified by their décor and staff uniforms. We chose Seafood, enclosed by simulated bamboo walls and the waiters wear sailor caps. Paella is one of their signature dishes but the absence of chorizo and paprika rendered it a bit lacking in flavor. Seafood is laid out for diners to select from. Inspite of the paella not meeting our standards, we had a very good meal: fresh vegetable bowl, Egyptian salads and dips, including tahina, very tender squid done with lemon butter sauce, crispy deep fried coated prawns and perfectly grilled dorak and boulty. Beside our boat was a floating restaurant, which we were told can the hired for private parties. Ah, the good life that is Cairo!

Back on home ground, the price of rice has gone up: Sinandomeng now costs P1200 a sack of 50 kilos from our suki Venessa Rice Dealer. Vilma’s bangus sells at P140 a kilo and Demet’s prawns from P448 (if you are a friend you get one piece as tawad).

It seems ATM machines are not a guarantee you’ll get your money. Over the past week we tried to get some cash from the Equitable dispenser at the cinema area of Alabang Town Center. We got debited for the money but no cash came out. We called the emergency number, and after listening to a recording for quite a while, we finally got a customer service lady who said she’d make a report but that it would take several days to put my balance in order.

Now we know, we are back in the Philippines!

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