Downtown's La Viennoise fills up: Andiamo, Floating Cups, ANŪT and Le LAB move in
Heliopolis pizzeria Andiamo, Maadi café Floating Cups, homeware brand ANŪT and design gallery Le LAB have all opened in La Viennoise, the restored 1896 building on Champollion Street.
7 Champollion Street, Downtown, Cairo
One of Downtown Cairo's grand old buildings is turning into a place to spend an afternoon. La Viennoise, built in 1896 at the corner of Champollion and Mahmoud Bassiouny streets, has been restored by Al Ismaelia for Real Estate Investment and reopened around its courtyard as a mix of Egyptian food, design, fashion and beauty concepts. Four new arrivals this week, reported by CairoScene, show what that mix looks like.
Andiamo, known in Heliopolis for its pizzas, cocktails and long lunches, has opened its second branch here and is giving it more of a trattoria feel. Floating Cups, the specialty coffee spot tucked inside the Community Services Association in Maadi, has opened its first café outside CSA in the same courtyard.
ANŪT, the home and lifestyle brand founded in 2024 by Goya Gallagher and named after the sky goddess Nut, has opened its second Cairo shop after its Zamalek flagship, and its third in Egypt after El Gouna. It sells pieces made by artisans around the country: Fayoum pottery, textiles woven in Akhmim, hand-embroidered table linen, sculpture and wall art. The brand also runs an embroidery school for women who work from home.
Le LAB, the collectible design gallery founded in 2021 by collector Rasheed Kamel, has left Sheikh Zayed for a new space here that works as a gallery, studio and workshop. The gallery showed Egyptian artists including Samir Fouad, Khaled Zaki and Moataz Nasr at Frieze Masters in London this month.
They join Santriyya, Maison Gamil, Beauts, Mix and Match and Huwa, which are already in the building. Al Ismaelia has spent more than a decade buying and restoring Downtown buildings, and La Viennoise, long used for art shows, is one of its best known.
The building is at 7 Champollion Street, a short walk from Tahrir Square and the Egyptian Museum, so it is easy to pair with a museum morning or an evening at a Downtown venue. Opening hours have not been published for every shop: check each brand's own page before you go, and come by metro to Sadat station rather than looking for parking on Downtown's narrow streets.