2 facts:<\/p>\n
1. It is not possible to (legally) buy non-egyptian alcohol by the bottle in egypt except at duty free upon entry.<\/p>\n
I have only seen one non-egyptian produced beer here, ever. And that was Paulaner Weizen only available during Oktoberfest at the Marriott. [This isn’t even a very good example of Weizens, btw]<\/p>\n
One cannot purchase foreign wine anywhere. The “best” one can get is wine made from grapes imported from South Africa or Lebanon.<\/p>\n
2. Pork products are even harder to come by than alcohol. Though we have finally located a reliable source for “american” bacon. His canadian bacon is almost inedible due to the salt content.<\/p>\n
Anyway, we have read about the “Italian Club”. Supposedly great pizza. [There are lots of clubs here. British club, Greek Club, etc. They cater to ex-pats of the respective countries. They typically charge a LE5 cover for non-members. That is just shy of US$1. Haven’t found an “American club” yet. And I am not sure if I would join if I found one.].<\/p>\n
So we go for dinner this evening.<\/p>\n
THEY HAVE IMPORTED ITALIAN WINE<\/strong><\/em>. They were out of the reds, but we had a very nice dry Italian white. They poured a splash into my glass to taste. I raised it to my nose and inhaled it. My eyes rolled back into my head and a look of “I have died and gone to heaven” crossed my face.<\/p>\n I don’t think I can describe how much this means to have found this. While Egyptian beer is merely boring and tasteless, Egyptian wine is downright offensive.<\/strong><\/p>\n But it gets better.<\/p>\n They had prosciutto<\/strong>. And real salami<\/strong>. And mortadella<\/strong>. I think this places needs to go into regular rotation in the restaurant list.<\/p>\n Dinner for 2, with an OUTRAGEOUSLY priced bottle of wine: 200LE. About US$35.<\/p>\n It gives one reason to soldier on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2 facts: 1. It is not possible to (legally) buy non-egyptian alcohol by the bottle in egypt except at duty free upon entry. I have only seen one non-egyptian produced beer here, ever. And that was Paulaner Weizen only available during Oktoberfest at the Marriott. [This isn’t even a very good example of Weizens, btw] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-differences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.cairochronicles.com\/jack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNow, it ain’t Salumi’s but it brough a tear to my eye.<\/p>\n