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Aswan Restaurants

Salah al-Din

  • Corniche el-Nil
    Aswan
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Salah al-Din

Ten for Dinner at Salah al-DinMore Photos
A floating restaurant on the River Nile? That's got to be expensive right? Well no. I was very impressed with the prices at the Salah al-Din; almost as impressed as I was with the setting.

The Corniche el-Nil is the prestige road of Aswan, a smart thoroughfare lined with banks that follows the bank of the Nile. It is only on this road and its namesake in Luxor that you will find that most un-Egyptian of objects, the traffic light. More amazingly, the drivers obey them!

It is on this central stretch of road in Aswan that you will see the entrance to Salah al-Din. The restaurant is built down the bank, with at least two floors. But the real treat is at the bottom, where a pontoon supports a floating terrace. Carpet underfoot and beer in hand the diner is able to sit and watch the sun sink behind the desert hills across the river in a last blaze of fire, and stygian darkness descend. Shaded from the city by the river bank, the only illumination out over the oily water are the floodlights picking out the Tombs of the Nobles and the Aga Khan's Mausoleum in soft orange glows, and the running lights of passing boats, fractured and reflected in the wavelets left in their wake. A flash of movement, a sigh, and a ripple in the stream is all that signifies the presence of wildlife - bats, swallows, I'm not sure. However you want to put it, this floating restaurant is an idyllic place to while away the evening.

Nor will you pay through the nose for it either. I went for 'Fish Tagen Nupien Style' - the local take on a Moroccan tagine, served in a casserole dish. The fish, which appeared in soft white lumps, was locally-caught tilapia. The sauce that accompanied it, based on tomatos and celery, was thankfully mild so as not to drown out the taste of the fish. And the price? A mere E£28 (roughly 2.50GBP). Drinks-wise, beer was only E£10, fresh orange juice E£8, and my beloved fresh lemon juice only E£6. Our wise-cracking waiter professed to be very impressed when I ordered an "Aseer limoon min fadlak". It was of course one of the first phrases I endeavoured to learn!

Following the meal the group headed upstairs to the lounge. In a complete reversal of British culture we went indoors to smoke. Shisha, the famed Egyptian 'hubble-bubble' cost E£4 per pot. Between the ten of us we ordered up four - three with apple tobacco, one with mango. The ornate shisha were provided for us, embers glowing under their protective covers. We were also provided with plastic nozzles to cap the pipe mouthpiece, each person to keep their own. This was a concession to hygiene I had not seen in Morocco, and which I found a bit superfluous. Still, it gives you an example of the standards that they set themselves here. The mango-flavoured tobacco I found a bit full-on and sweet for my tastes, but the apple showed why it is a favourite of tourists. Soon most of us were puffing away like good 'uns, experimenting with blowing smoke rings or - in my case - breathing twin plumes of smoke from my nostrils until I looked like a moustachioed Wing Commander. What I did find, and maybe it was just because of the sucking gulps I was taking was that I rapidly started feeling, well, drunk. Certainly light-headed and woozy. And I started to understand the appeal the shisha has throughout the middle east as a social lubricant when drinking alcohol is frowned upon. Certainly for me, this social activity topped off a very pleasant and memorable evening.
From journal Frontier of the Pharoahs