Cairo Cafe: An Orange County Treasure

I went to LA on Sunday to celebrate with my friend Sandy for her 60^th b-day!  We went to Hollywood and took the celebrity bus tour-something I always wanted to do (and better in my mind than in real life). We did see the Pretty Women balcony and I also liked Judy Garland’s statues but it was really mostly a “so and so lived here before they died” sort of tour.  The living must be building their houses where the buses can’t go or not in Hollywood….

We then went to the Broad Art Museum which was LOVELY.  The building is beautiful all by itself and I was interested to see Yagoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room as well as Tajashi Murakami’s art that reminds me of the wonderful Japanese children’s movies Elena used to watch.. That being said, my most favorite individual piece was this one “The Right People” and “The Other People” by Ed Rusha.  My favorite collection was by Jean Michel Basquiat-all of which make me really THINK. 

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We moved from the Broad to an Egyptian restaurant near Disney called the Cairo Café. It has great reviews for food and the food was AMAZING. The only bad part of this place is the main eating area is a covered patio and the chairs make a horrible scraping sound on the concrete AND it is a hookah lounge so people are smoking hookah.  They do have some inside seating-also not attractive and a table or two in front by the road. I would go by the road because the food was really amazing. I had multiple things from the 1000 things list to include:

Egyptian Falafel.  The falafel is made with fava beans instead of chickpeas and it really does give it a different taste. They are also crispier on the outside. These came with a tahini sauce.  Really impressive.

Stuffed Pigeon.  Now I know that I have, in the past, not been a huge fan of pigeon tut these had a really nice rice stuffing that had 7 spice powder (a Middle Eastern thing) along with small pieces of pigeon. 

Molokhia. This is a very, very, very slimy soup.  The taste is not bad but I cannot and will not get paste the fact that it is described (perfectly) in the book as being “mucilaginous”. Yep, snot-like. AHHHH.  Nothing that goes into my mouth should be described as mucilaginous.  Skip this.

Feteer. This is the Egyptian cross between a croissant and a pizza. The yeast dough is made with ghee (clarified butter) and the resulting flaky pastry is buttery. You have your choice of toppings but we choose the spicy cheese and honey. 

Since I am still very much on my diet and only got to eat one bite of all of the above, we also had chicken kabob that was grilled perfectly.  Came with a nice salad w/o dressing (upon my request). Following all of this, we also had two more of the 1000 things:Om Ali. 

Om Ali. Om Ali is a hot bread pudding made from puff pastry and nuts.  It is really creamy and yummy.

Rice pudding. This version of rice pudding is really thick and topped with coconut and pistachios.  I really enjoyed it but not as much as I did the Om Ali AND the Kunafa.

Kunafa. So, kunafa, is not listed on the 1000 things for Egypt but that is only because Mimi has not had this version. Our waiter kept telling us that their kunafa was amazing and he was very much correct.  First of all, the plating was so pretty and they make a cream-based version rather than the cheese version.  kunafa is sort of a heavy flan that has these tiny little shredded noodles (or phyllo dough) on top that gives is crunch. 

Would I eat here again? I would and I am just glad I don’t live close as I would get the falafels and kunafa to go every day….