Following their grand opening last week, Cairo is all a buzz about Eat & Barrel the newest hot spot restaurant on the Nile. With the city talking about the insane boozed filled launch it was easy to forget that this huge multifunctional facility is actually a restaurant offering a variety of everyone’s favourite dishes. Looking to find out if the food is as equally amazing as the décor and drinks, we headed down for a hearty lunch and were not disappointed.

From the moment one walks into the Eat & Barrel, one is greeted by a vast colourful space overlooking the iconic Nile. Located on the third floor of the Sunset Boat on the Giza corniche, Eat & Barrel instantly stands out in Egypt as it’ openness and size offers patrons the opportunity of having a comfortable private meal with friends without feeling like the whole restaurant is sitting with you.

Having to pry our eyes away from the breathtaking Nile view, we examined the menu and decided to give one dish from each section a chance to impress our taste buds. Starting with soups, we tried their mushroom soup and their sun dried tomato soup. Both soups were spectacular and instantly started the debate of which one is better. Although the mushroom soup was among the earthiest and most delicious mushroom soups we have tried in Cairo, the winner in this round was the sundried tomato soup for its almost flawless balance of herbs and flavours, as well as its wonderful presentation.

For the next course we decided to give the crab and salmon salad a chance and were instantly delighted by the carefully constructed colourful tower of delicious fresh seafood. Stacked in layers intermixing crab, avocado, tomato, and salmon, this dish was completely a showstopper, and left us debating whether we should eat as we were getting full just looking at it with our eyes.

For the entre course we decided to mix up and settled on trying the Mushroom Cheese Burger, the Mushroom Chicken Mushroom, the Pasta Di Mare, and of course the Rib Eye Steak. Once again the food arrived to table and instantly began feeding our eyes. The burger was deliciously moist, topped with perfectly sautéed mushrooms. The Mushroom Chicken Mushroom was a cheese lover’s dream hiding away the deliciousness underneath served beside Spanish rice packing quite the kick for spice fans. The Pasta Di Mare quite like the ocean was packed with fresh seafood and was well cooked and seasoned and will be a hit with those who like their pasta saucy. The real winner of the afternoon was surprisingly the rib eye steak. All too often restaurants serve steaks without proper grill marks despite being cooked to the point of being a dry waste of meat. This was not the case at Eat & Barrel, for when our steak was brought to the table it appeared with some of the sexiest grill marks and was cooked to medium-rare perfection, which sadly is rare to find in Cairo.

As the weather warmed over the course of the meal, Eat & Barrel decided to retract its roof letting the sunshine fill the restaurant with a heavenly glow. With the colourful warm atmosphere, affordable prices, thirst quenching cocktails, and the high standards of service it became clear why there was a lot of buzz surrounding this place. That being said Eat & Barrel is destined to be one of the best places not only to view the Nile, but to enjoy an affordable expertly prepared meal, proving that the hype surrounding is totally justified.

Find out more about Eat & Barrel on their Facebook page here.