Yangtze Qu Fuses the Puzzle Pieces of Asian Cuisine Under One Roof

Thanks to a myriad of restaurants posing as ‘Asian fusion’ and actually making food that incorporates only 10% of the range of flavours employed by Asian cuisines, Asian fusion restaurants have developed a bad reputation. It’s not because these restaurants don’t develop proper menus or that they have bad marketing; it’s because they’re creating concepts based on a study of the market rather than genuine love.

Yangtze Qu, The Nox’s Asian fusion destination, is full of love. You can feel it in the way every corner of the restaurant is diligently looked after, and in the way they’re constantly on the hunt for new ways they can make Asian cuisine fun, fresh and slightly familiar for their audience.

The restaurant was founded by Youssef Maged, an avid Asian food fanatic who grew up in close quarters with people working in hospitality, in 2023. In his time in hotels and restaurants, Maged explored worlds of cuisines, prepared by chefs from all over the world. He favoured the kitchen over pools and luxury lounges, and fell head over heels for Asian cuisine.

“Growing up, I spent most of my time in the kitchen,” Maged tells Scene Eats, “I loved food, I loved the fact that these chefs could take simple, unassuming ingredients and turn them into dishes from each corner of the world.”

When Maged grew up, he experienced the taste of his love in full with trips to Asia. On a China trip, he became enamoured by the Yangtze River - otherwise referred to as Yangtze Qu - with its calm mountains surrounded by green mountains, so much so that it became the name of the space where he expressed his burning passion, his restaurant.

When I visited Yangtze Qu, I experienced this love and attention firsthand. Every spoonful of soup, chopstick-ful of noodles and even forkful of salad carried a gallery of flavour that tasted like it was well thought out. Generally, Yangtze Qu’s food left the impression that good art leaves on you; the warmth of recognising that another person took the time to conceptualise, experiment with, and then make the thing before you.

It’s understandably difficult to imagine how the details of a dish could compare to paintbrush strokes in a painting, so allow me to paint a picture (pun intended) using Yangtze Qu’s soups. I tried two opposite ends of the spectrum of the restaurant’s soups; the tom yum, which shouted with vibrant tomato, and a glass noodle soup that whispered in subtle turmeric. Despite their stark difference in both flavour and components - one soup carried prawns while the other held chicken - both were able to tell a story within each spoonful, the tom yum more so. It takes at least five spoonfuls to fully grasp the full breadth of the dish’s flavour, which, in the seemingly simple world of soup, marks genuine skill.

In the summer heat, Yangtze Qu’s salmon tartare salad is a fresh cake-shaped haven - a true treat. Their new shredded beef gyozas come distinctly sweet, with surrounding crusty halos. Their noodles are hand-pulled, and somehow both creamy and full of spice. Their new sushi sandwiches left me wanting more, despite being full to the brim, because they were both subtle and bursting with flavour.

“Yangtze Qu’s menu is designed to preserve the authenticity of classic Asian flavour, while making it more appealing to the palate of an Egyptian audience. We look at trends in the Far East as well as in Cairo. It is both new and familiar.”

To attempt to describe Yangtze Qu’s menu is pointless, because it is constantly shifting. The restaurant team is constantly inviting trusted critics over to test their newest concoctions, scrambling to make them the best they can be afterwards. In the kitchen, day to day, individual chefs are trained to craft specific dishes and drinks. The person responsible for their creamy, refreshing mango matcha and their melting matcha white chocolate fondant is not the same person responsible for the freshness of their tartare. Every soldier covers a front, and the result is a comprehensive dining experience that manages to fit just right.