El Andalous - Chick Flick

Chick Flick - Preparing to Open

As things start to function again, there’s a bit of a kick towards new business opening up. BestWay will likely forever remain my most exciting new business entrant in Sahl Hasheesh (after all, it enabled me to obtain most of my needs without having to get a taxi into Hurghada), but Chick Flick, opened just this last weekend, must come a close second.

It doesn’t sell films for women to rent so that they can weep at home in private; it’s a fried chicken place! You can imagine my excitement after months of no KFC. It does chicken pieces with fries, chicken burgers, popcorn chicken... Yum, yum. The prices are pretty good – cheaper than KFC at any rate. They deliver for 20LE (around a quid).

It’s where a coffee shop, Bake and Sweet, used to be. They did good coffee, and cakes, well, they’re always good wherever they are. The best thing is, Chick Flick is run by the people who ran Bake and Sweet. Consequently, they still serve coffee and cake during the day (or any time, I guess). Nothing’s lost, everything’s gained. I am in heaven.

Anyway, four of us tried it out this weekend. It’s Eid this weekend (big Eid as opposed to the smaller Eid after Ramadan), so we didn’t want to eat out and risk being among a lot of people. Sahl Hasheesh is pretty busy this weekend. Therefore, we decided to experiment with the home delivery.

I actually asked John to phone as I don’t like the phone (in case you’d forgotten) and ordering for four people in Egypt was bound to be stressful and full of misunderstandings. I gave him my phone, but it turned out (I found out the following day) that I had no credit. This is rather mysterious as I topped it up on Tuesday and hadn’t used it, but I really haven’t a clue how this phone operates.

Anyway, John went upstairs to get his phone and ordered from there, giving his name as Madam Fiona. Oh how we laughed! He said he had to repeat the order three times, which is pretty standard over here. We waited in anticipation of what we’d actually get.

I’d been preparing myself for disappointment. I’ve bought some breaded chicken over here and not liked it and suspected it may just be that (BestWay is just next door, so they could just pop along, buy what they need, and cook it). We psyched ourselves up to receiving something different from what we’d ordered. We wondered if it would even arrive.

They said it would take twenty minutes and twenty minutes later, it arrived, all nicely packaged up. The portions were huge. I had three pieces of chicken and French fries (58 LE, around 3 GBP) and it was almost too much for me to eat. There was rather a lot of covering on the chicken, but it was quite spicy and tasty and the chicken was good. The others had chicken burgers and chicken strips (called chicken stripes on the menu); all portions were huge and everyone was satisfied. The only thing that was wrong was that we got charged too much for one of the items; we suspect there was some kind of confusion as they’ve only just opened. We were probably their first ever delivery.

I should have taken a photo, but I haven’t got round to it yet. The photo is from a few days before it opened and is by Amanda, not me. I hope she doesn’t mind me using it!