“I don’t think I can face another mouthful” I whimpered to Alf. I felt like Mr Bean in that sketch where he tries to hide his revolting steak tartare in a French restaurant so it looks as if he’s finished. But no such option existed with my bowl of toxic green Molokhia, and I had to keep shovelling it into my mouth, with polite grimacing smiles at the expectant waiter.
I met Alf for a late Egyptian lunch at Ali Baba, where we were almost the only customers. Ali Baba is a stone’s throw from Regent’s Park, and has been a going concern since 1979. They proudly display a framed endorsement from one of Nigella Lawson’s cookbooks where she describes a pudding she had there in the ’90s. Impressive in a way. But maybe also a red flag that their last good review was a quarter of a century ago.
We didn’t taste Nigella’s pudding – it no longer appeared to be on the menu. A shame, because everything else we had was hard work.
I’ll start with my Molokhia, which still makes me queasy thinking about it weeks later. The dish is made of “slow cooked corchorus leaves”. I’d imagined this to be spinach-like. Instead, the cooking turns the leaves into a gloopy gunge. The first spoonfull I drew out of the swampy bowl appeared to have a hair in it, until I realised it was actually a string of slime, stretching mozzarella-like. But unlike mozzarella, this wasn’t pleasant. Corchorus leaves have the texture of cold pondweed, with a faintly citrus tang. Altogether very unpleasant. My bowl of cold, luminescent viscosity was topped with an unseasoned, room temperature, roast chicken thigh, which was edible once I scraped the bright green goo off.
Alf had a bit more luck with his main, a Bamia, which is okra cooked in tomatoes. He seemed to find it nice enough, although the mouthful I tried wasn’t the best. Okra is always unpalatably slimy, and I’d have struggled with more than a couple of bites myself.
I guess the Egyptians like their food viscuous, so maybe their cuisine is an acquired taste. I don’t think I’ll be rushing to acquire it myself though.
This sorry lunch began with starters that were an indication of things to come. We shared a fatoush, which can be a nice salad. But this one just seemed to be limp tomatoes and cucumber chunks in vinegar, lemon juice and hard rusks. We also thought Kubeba might be a nice starter – that is ‘minced lamb in a fried wheat crust’. What we got was drier than the Sahara; like licking a pyramid. We assumed they might put some kind of sauce, hummus or salad in with the bread. But nope, just hard pitta and over-cooked lamb patty.
Even the worst Middle-Eastern restaurant can always be counted on to serve up a decent desert, since they always have a few baklava – and Ali Baba’s were decent enough. I ordered an Egyptian coffee too, to get that muddy Molokhia tang out of my mouth. Egyptian coffee is of the extremely strong kind, served black, with fine grounds in the bottom of the cup. In every other country they take the edge off by plying it with sugar. Not at Ali Baba’s though. My mouth went from the pungent piquancy of cochorus to bitter roughness.
All in all, not one I’d recommend. Sorry to disagree, Nigella.
Score: 2/10
Price: £45
Address: 32 Ivor Pl, NW1 6DA
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