Castello

The Castello restaurant is offers Italian, Egyptian and a limited English menu. The proprietor is clearly aiming high and seeking to offer the best. Most visitors to Luxor regard the Mama Mia at the sheraton to offer the best Italian food. It may do, but its prices are very high. The Castello has the chef from the Mama Mia, so the standards should be as good, but without the hotel price tag. The owner has also selected other chefs and waiters from the surrounding hotels to build his quality team.

The Castello is along the road opposite the Lotus hotel which is becoming famous for its restaurants. From the hotels road it is just past Deans and the Lantern, but before Snobs and Casablanca.

The restaurant only opened in the summer of 2009 and its decor is still very fresh. The walls are a neutral magnolia, the ceiling mostly white with a design picked out in deep beige in the style of a traditional Egyptian house. The Egyptian theme carries through to the lighting, based on multi-coloured chandeliers and wall lights and varnished wood high-backed chairs around good-sized tables. Table lined is red over white with matching cloth serviettes. Only the inevitable Coca Cola fridge, shielding the door to the toilets, disturbs the decor theme.

The waiters are casually dressed but smart and attentive.

The menu is in clearly defined sections. Starters and soups have their own pages, a good variety of pastas their own page, pizzas on another and other meat and chicken meals on others. Seafood, Egyptian food and vegetarian dishes also have their own pages. Soft and hot drinks are available but not alcohol, although you can bring your own if you are discrete.

Prices generally are very competitive, with soups from LE8, meat Tajines from LE32 (LE20 for vegetarian) including your choice of rice or salad. Most Italian dishes are well-priced too, with the possible exception of the pizzas which, at LE25 - LE50, mostly around LE40, are more expensive here than at many competing restaurants outside the hotels. Pasta meals are much less expensive and desserts are well priced at between LE12 and LE18. A large water is only LE7. Originally Castello served only Egyptian and Italian meals, but amongst the English meals to be added more recently is fish and chips at a favourable LE30. Refreshingly, the prices include tax and service charges, so you know where you stand without having to add these extras, which can increase bills at some other restaurants by 25%.

Variations on the menu standards can usually be agreed because the food is cooked to order. This takes a while but it is worth waiting for. The meals are excellent and the portions generous.

Restaurants in Luxor come and go, but this one deserves to be around for quite a while. Give it a try!

 

Review updated March 2010
Prices at March 2010