Sunday, August 3, 2008

Casper & Gambini's: "The Taste of Tradition"

“Everybody must eat to live. Some people eat to live longer.” This wise, obscure philosophy is the slogan depicted on the menus, next to a spruced-up dustbowl-era farmer with a scythe across his shoulders. It is hard to reconcile their down-home pure image with their locale in gleaming Nile City, especially when said locale makes their deliveries really late. And also because it’s a Lebanese chain.
We’ve ordered from C and G several times before, having been turned on to it by our fancier colleagues. For a long time, C and G menus were in greater demand around our office than the Companies Law and its Executive Regulations, precious commodities indeed. I have been induced to leave my seat several times in search of this menu. Irate lawyers often stamped into offices accusing others of filching it. Such was the feverish demand that upon receiving a copy into our custody some months ago, we immediately had it photocopied twice, each locking a copy into our respective drawers and handing the original back to its owner. It transpired that this scarcity of menus was because they were printing new menus, which hadn’t come in yet. A new menu was delivered with our order today, and I was endlessly tickled to find that on the cover it actually says “delivery menu 2nd edition” while on the previous one it says “delivery menu 1st edition”. I have both of them beside me right now. Such accurate reporting exemplifies my hard-won lawyering skills, you know. Also, they now deliver up to 11:30 pm. Balad 3azeema bardo.
So, I ordered my usual, the Best Low-Cal Tuna at L.E. 18. This is described as “tuna in water, sweet corn, sliced tomatoes, cucumber, light mayo and tomato in a sliced multi-grain – 490 calories”. I ordered it in a baguette though. On examining the new menu, I find that now it comes in a “freshly baked multi-grain baguette”! An oracle ya nas.
Mystic Mo, being off vegetarianism, ordered the Chicken Fajita Wrap at L.E. 29. Actually, on the old menu it was L.E. 27. Still overpriced. This is said to be “tender chicken sautéed in fajita spices, sweet peppers and onions with lettuce, salsa, sour cream, guacamole and mozzarella cheese, all wrapped in a fat-free flour tortilla.” He also had a café mocha.

Pros:
We both liked our sandwiches very much. Mine was light, fresh, only appropriately mayo-ed and very large (that’s what she said!). And kind of low-cal I guess. His wrap was yummy too. “Juicy, as Mexican food should be,” he said. “Fulfilling. Malyan 7agat. Shebe3t wetkayeft we kol el 7agat di.” I had a bite, it was yummy, although I prefer to generally eat lighter things at work. Not that I’m busy. They still don’t know I’m back from vacation yet. The coffee was also great, I had some of that as well (the gross-out factor in our office has receded far, far into the horizon). It was both deeply chocolatey and deeply coffeelike. Really kind of a triumph, especially for Cairo.

Cons:
The time it took, but we have to factor in the driving distance. The napkins were minute though. Mi-nooot. Kind of expensive as well.

Mystic Mo’s ranking: 8

My ranking: 10. For my sandwich anyway. It really was an ideal tuna sandwich.

6 comments:

thingsonmymindgrapes said...

Things I love about this post:

1. Balad 3azeema bardo.
2. That's what she said! -And properly used!
3. Mi-nooot! -Triple 'o' usage?! You're my favorite.

There's no need for a tuna sammich to be nearly 500 calories though.

Sherief said...

You ARE in love with "The Office"! :).

Forsoothsayer said...

i do love the office! yesterday i said to my friend: "don't you miss the office?" and he said "not really".

Sherief said...

May be he thought you're talking about your working office, not Steve Carrel's office :).

La Gitana said...

C&G has some very good food items and some very bad food items. Their portions are pretty small for the price, but their sandwiches are really good. Their salads leave something to be desired though and feel like someone decided to throw in EVERY INGREDIENT THEY HAD into them. Asian noodle salad is the biggest culprit here.

I was just talking about how much I miss Michael Scott the other day. I will never be able to remove "DWIGHT YOU IGNORANT SLUT" from my brain.

scribbled said...

i went there once, for what turned out to be a job interview. if i had known i would have ordered more.