In the hushed light of Four Seasons Cairo at The First Residence, the Tea Lounge carried its usual air of refinement: polished marble, high-backed chairs, Cairo’s usual cadence of clinking cutlery. And then came the disruption: a lunch hosted by Avec Karim and a preview of the restaurant’s autumn menu.Chef Karim has long been charting Egypt plate by plate. His “Tableside” concept is both retrospective and forward motion, threading together years of expeditions — the foraging trips, the sourcing detours, the quiet hours of research and development — into a menu that reads like a travelogue. It’s a catalogue of memory, each dish pinned to a place, a moment, an encounter.The sequence began in sly understatement: a smoked egg yolk softened by basterma cream and fig leaf syrup, breakfast turned into theatre. It was a kind of opening gesture — humble, domestic — but beneath it, a quiet provocation. What happens when the familiar is reimagined so completely it becomes strange again? From that point, every course built on the last, as if Karim were telling a story in fragments. Each plate pulled from something buried — an old recipe, a fleeting scent, a memory of home — and set it back before us, intact.What began as an exclusive lunch at Four Seasons Cairo at The First Residence became something else entirely: Egypt’s flavours reframed as a journey, one that insists the future of dining lies not only in reinvention, but in the stories the table dares to hold.

For reservations head to: https://aveckarim.odoo.com/appointment/1