Sofra is a victim of its own success. It has potential to be great - but it’s way too popular (definitely make a reservation, many people were turned away) and the staff can’t keep up.

The good: Staff were friendly, the restaurant set up is beautiful with antique furnishing, they have a wide variety of juices and the fresh lemon juice was yummy. Food wise, we enjoyed the baked lamb kofta - delicious, cooked perfectly so the meat wasn’t dry. The prices are really affordable and fair.

The bad:

• We were seated in a small room next to the entrance, which made us invisible to staff and it was really stuffy when the front desk guy closed the doors, we asked for it to be opened up to get some air conditioning from the bigger room. Unfortunately another Indian family was also seated in the room across us, as only the European guests were shown upstairs for seating.
• The wait time. It took 30 minutes for our drinks to arrive and a total of 50 mins for our food - which was considered fast as we walked up to the front desk to ask to place our orders instead of waiting in the room. The Indian family waited 40 minutes to just place their orders.
• Unfortunately they forgot my lemon juice order initially
• The food was disappointing. The chicken tajin had chicken fried separately and placed on top of the stew instead of being cooked together. Perhaps they had no time - chicken was dry and the stew was tasteless. The fried prawns were a little salty and the rice was hard and tasteless as well.

To be fair, the kind front waiter noticed we didn’t finish our food and asked for feedback. I showed him the dry chicken and he waived it off the bill.

Perhaps the good reviews here are from tourists who haven’t tasted great Egyptian food - there’s way better restaurants such as Loqma and El Kebabgy.

If the Sofra kitchen can’t keep up with the orders, close some of your rooms and limit the number of guests so the quality of food is good.