Pottery Cafe

Had the car the whole day today, so decided to go to the AUC Bookstore , Downtown. A friend had told me that they keep a lot of English books, thought I might find something of interest to read.

Browsed in the bookshop, and, came out armed with a large bag of purchases, including, how to speak basic Arabic to get by. The bookshop is nice, lots of interesting books (and in English! Mama, I'm in heaven!) but there is no place to sit and read or browse and have copy. Its an old fashioned bookstore. Look around, choose your titles, pay and go, though to be fair no one throws you out - if you can stand and browse books for hours, of course, you may.

On crossing the road, spotted a small sign which said Pottery Cafe. Now, I had read a write-up about this in some magazine, which talked about its young owner, his philosophy, how they change the menu regularly in response to customer feedback, how he does morning huddles with his team, etc... The article had mentioned that it was quaint, and, that they were planning to open in Maadi soon, so I decided to drop in.

The first thing that struck me was that by walking in, I had clearly lowered the average age by at least 5-7 years. The place is full of AUC students, sipping their lattes, furiously typing on their laptops (the place is wi-fi).

Ordered a Cheese and Pesto Panini (sounded yum!) served with French fries which sounded delicious. Since it had been quite hot outside, ordered a Vanilla milkshake to go with it.

At arpprox LE 11.00, the panini was good, though pesto is a msinomer. It essentially basil leaves along with cheese, but it still tasted good. Its served with lots of crisp french fries, which completes your carbohyrate fix for the day.

I would avoid the milkshake (LE11 again). Its very watery milky (I like my milkshake sweet & thick), and, the vanilla milkshake has banana.

Ordered a latte (LE 9.50) which was quie decent, and sat flipping through the magazines and listening some really nice instrumental music.

The menu is quite extensive, and, reasonably priced. There is a 12% service charge.

The ambience is very nice with stucco beige walls framed by dark wood. There is a quaint round wrought iron staircase going up, which leads to another room done up similarly. Here, is where you see the entire student community sprawled out all over the place. The atmosphere is very cozy.

Definately worth a visit and a meal.