La Gourmandise

User Review:

• For years, La Gourmandise café in the Four Seasons Giza's First Mall has enjoyed a monopoly on French tea time served with a flourish. The café's recently opened branch in Maadi brings beautifully displayed macaroons and petit-fours to the neighbourhood, discarding completely the vacuous mall atmosphere, and maybe even outdoing its sister branch in terms of flare and ambiance. Saying that the Road Nine café has bloomed may sound overly poetic; but we can't ignore that the floral and butterfly decorations adorning the restaurant's large windows evoke the image of a delicate flower blooming between the cracks of a pavement. Inside La Gourmandise, grey marble floor contrast deep fuchsia walls. The café has a surprising amount of floor space, with tables and booths occupying three levels. The upper level features space-age-type silver pillars, with matching metallic wall decorations, making the café an intriguing blend of a French patisserie and a modern art showroom. Pale pink leather menus belie La Gourmandise's tendency towards tea parties and ruffles, with blossoms and flower emblems stencilled excessively onto dining surfaces and placemats. The extensive menu features its fair share of salads, appetisers, sandwiches and pizzas, as well as three full pages of dessert selections. Our terrine volaille (36LE) arrived in a single, substantial slice with a side of dressed greens and toasted almonds. The chicken liver was slightly on the heavy side, but tasty when combined with a slice of fresh bread from the basket. The salad La Gourmandise (48LE) was an overzealous combination of rolled smoked salmon, sliced mushrooms, avocado and almonds. While the ingredients were delicious when tried separately, the salad was a bit imbalanced; as the vegetables drowned out the meagre lettuce. The quiche salmon-shrimps (24LE) was more manageable, with thin, flaky crust served in a baked square rather than the usual wedge slice. The croque monsieur (38LE) substituted the traditional ham with turkey, and arrived coated with toasted cheese and accompanied by a porcelain tureen of French fries for an indulgent main dish. Despite the friendly service and French pleasantries throughout the meal, the true rewards quite literally arrived with dessert in the form of two golden brown macaroons perched beside the perfectly prepared, rich chocolate soufflé and its accompanying dollop of vanilla ice cream. The outer shell cracked with just the right amount of crunch, and mocha
• The description was provided by egyptraveluxe