Most vacationers go to Cairo to soak in millennia of historical past within the shadows of the pharaohs, nevertheless it’s onerous to disregard town’s vibrant meals scene, which has modified essentially because the Arab Spring got here to Egypt 13 years in the past. At this time, it’s a sprawling, sun-baked metropolis of steam-wreathed meals carts below gleaming workplace buildings, retailers promoting a rainbow of spices in buzzing, labyrinthine souks, and an increasing number of family-run institutions providing specialty regional cuisines and patio seating by the Nile—all of this a stone’s throw from dusty historical monuments which have witnessed the whole lot from the invention of beer to the Instagramming of town’s hippest craft beer bars.
Hana Gamal for Severe Eats
Welcome to Severe Eats’ grand tour of Cairo eating, a part of Global Eats, a sequence of guides to a few of the world’s most essential and thrilling meals cities. To tell these lists, we’ve turned to our most beneficial belongings—the cooks, cookbook authors, and recipe builders who each contribute their cooking experience to the positioning and know these cities and their meals higher than anybody. For Cairo, we spoke to our resident Egyptian culinary professional, Egyptian meals author and recipe developer Nermine Mansour, who was born and raised in and round Cairo, studying conventional Egyptian recipes below the watchful eye of her grandmother as a baby and frequenting beloved Cairene eating places as an grownup pupil.
Although she now lives within the US, Mansour returns to the Metropolis of a Thousand Minarets as usually as doable to additional inform her recipe writing and culinary information, looking out town’s centuries-old bazaars, meals stands, and eating places for ever deeper insights into her house delicacies. Right here, Mansour shares a few of her favourite locations to eat in Al-Qāhirah, alongside along with her love for town that turned her into the prepare dinner and author she is right now.
Eat Like an Egyptian
It didn’t take lengthy after the overthrow of strongman Hosni Mubarak for the Cairo meals scene to vary noticeably, Mansour says. First, there was a surge within the energetic avenue stall distributors lining the roads of downtown Cairo, who’ve since expanded their operations by including tables and chairs round their carts. They’ve been joined by different avenue carts run by new immigrants from across the Center East—now as an alternative of simply ta’ameya (Egyptian falafel), Cairenes can get Palestinian, Lebanese, and Syrian falafel at many corners within the metropolis.
Hana Gamal for Severe Eats
The political transition additionally opened up an entire new eating scene for sit-down eating places, together with extra conventional Egyptian fine-dining institutions, usually with cooks who’ve educated in kitchens all around the world.
”Egypt is a meals paradise for People and Europeans,” says Mansour. “You will get the perfect meals within the nation for nearly nothing, and Egypt can cater to any dietary restriction, together with vegan, gluten free, meat, seafood, and even keto. You’ll be able to have a full meal for $1 or $2, after which you’ve gotten top-tier eating places the place you possibly can eat for $100 or $120. We now have superb sushi and steaks. We now have cooks who educated in Tokyo, London, France—there’s no scarcity of top-tier cooks.”
But it surely’s a metropolis that may take some getting used to, particularly when you’re coming from the US, she says. “Cairo is a love-it-or-hate-it metropolis,” she says. “It’s loud, rowdy.”
Hana Gamal for Severe Eats
After which there’s the meals itself, which has “developed massive time within the final decade because the Arab Spring with the inflow of refugees from Syria, Lebanon, Palestine,” she says. Although these close by cuisines have lengthy had a hand within the evolution of Egyptian meals, these new Cairenes have added much more selection and nuance to a wealthy current Egyptian delicacies—a delicacies that already has 1000’s of centuries of Mediterranean, North African, Ottoman, Indian, French, and different influences. Within the final decade, what Mansour describes as “hardcore” Egyptian delicacies has taken off as Egyptians discovered a brand new sense of delight of their nationwide id.
Eating places
Koshary Abou Tarek
16 Marouf, Qasr El Nil, Cairo Governorate 4272135
Egyptian Christians, who make up about 10% of the population, quick round 200 days a yr, 55 of them spent adhering to a strict siami (basically vegan) eating regimen. They and their dietary restrictions have performed an enormous function in shaping Egyptian delicacies, with one of the vital widespread siami dishes being koshari.
Hana Gamal for Severe Eats
Among the many locations that Mansour went to rising up and as a younger grownup was Koshary Abou Tarek, which began as a avenue cart within the mid-Twentieth century and is now a modernized, three-story restaurant within the coronary heart of downtown Cairo. She makes some extent of returning not less than every year, and the place was one of many eating places she had in thoughts when she developed her personal koshari recipe for Severe Eats.
“I grew up consuming [at] Abou Tarek as a result of my dad and mom’ condominium was in Downtown and I labored and was taking a Spanish class close by; the standard has by no means gone down,” she says. “I’d go a few times every week—you get a seat and inside 5 minutes you get your dish, and it fills you the remainder of the day!”
Hana Gamal for Severe Eats
The cooks at Abou Tarek layer white, sq. bowls first with rice and lentils, then pasta, chickpeas, and a blanket of tomato sauce earlier than smothering all of it in crispy onions and scorching and garlicky sauces.
“It’s very simple to get a number of of the substances very mushy if the restaurant just isn’t skilled, however they at all times nail it,” she says. “The crispy onions are excellent, not oily, the pasta is a delight, and the whole lot is simply excellent.”
Seekh Mashwy Dokki
106 Nile St, Advert Doqi, Dokki, Giza Governorate 3753452
Typically a homesick Egyptian simply wants a spot the place they will get all of the dishes they’ve been craving whereas overseas. For Mansour, these dishes embody bissara (a vibrant inexperienced fava bean dip), molokhia (a aromatic jute mallow soup), kabab halla (braised beef), and koshari, in fact, which she usually finds at Seekh Mashwy Dokki, a contemporary, middle-class restaurant with intricately painted, tile-topped tables that overlook the Nile.
When Mansour was a baby, her grandmother made family-sized batches of molokhia, and Mansour vividly remembers the matriarch painstakingly chopping up contemporary jute leaves with a mezzaluna after which letting out an audibly loud gasp as she added the garlic-coriander paste to the simmering broth—this gasp is a standard step that ensures a tasty molokhia.
Molokhia (Egyptian Jute Mallow Soup)
Cooked in a rich chicken broth and flavored with a fragrant garlic-coriander paste, molokhia soup—jute mallow soup—is an iconic Egyptian dish.
Seekh Mashwy Dokki overlooks the Nile from infinite rows of tables alongside the slim, green-carpeted deck. She makes some extent of taking guests there to impress them with Cairo’s meals scene, like when her husband’s household visited from California.
“We had a foodstravaganza at Search Mashwy, and the waiters poured the molokhia from a giant pan right into a clay pot, and the whole lot was excellent,” she says. “The bread was freshly baked, our pita was made with complete wheat and bran with a smoky taste, the molokhia was freshly made—the whole lot was contemporary.”
Tante
Tucano Business Advanced, Youssef Abbas, St, Nasr Metropolis, Cairo Governorate 4434110
Fatta—slow-cooked beef in a garlic-vinegar sauce (and typically tomato sauce) over toasted pita and toasted basmati rice—is a dish that serves because the centerpiece of many an Egyptian celebration, and Mansour says it’s deeply tied to her reminiscences of numerous festivals and holidays rising up in Egypt.
When she’s again within the nation and hankering for fatta with out the fuss of creating it in a house kitchen, she goes for the subsequent smartest thing at Tante, a more moderen however much-lauded place began by Ashraf Abdel Baky, a well-known Egyptian comic. The restaurant makes an attempt to recreate the comfortable, pleasant feeling of a middle-class Cairo house—although that’s conveyed extra by means of the homestyle menu and convivial workers than the place itself, which has the black leather-based chairs and spherical, picket tables you would possibly anticipate in a European cafe.
“He’s utilizing the recipes of his aunt [“Tante” means “aunt” in Arabic], and also you get the style of selfmade meals, a style of how Egyptians prepare dinner, and the whole lot is served in tagines,” says Mansour. “After I don’t have time to prepare dinner, and since my mother is older now, I’m going to this place, not a spot the place it’s stuffy. It’s convivial, it’s snug, and it’s very inviting.”
Desserts
Mandarine Koueider
5 Baghdad St., El Korba, Heliopolis, Cairo Governorate 4460213
Although she was born in Cairo, Mansour’s household moved a pair hours away to the seaside metropolis of Alexandria when she was younger. Nonetheless, she at all times regarded ahead to the journeys again to Cairo as a result of they included a cease at Koueider, a pastry store that’s an establishment within the metropolis.
“My father would make a cease over at Koueider and we’d get an assortment of Koueider sweets, so, for me, Koueider means household gatherings,” she says. “Now, each time I’m going again, the second day I arrive, I get a tray with my favorites—baklava, basbousa. That is the mecca of Egyptian sweets.”
The truth is, Mansour credit the place for uplifting her personal recipe for basbousa, a dessert she describes as a “miracle” consisting of a “shiny, glazed floor and outlined layers of sentimental semolina cake and thick, creamy ashta [clotted cream] … [w]ith some chopped pistachios on high so as to add crunch and a posh taste that is in flip floral, natural, and citrusy.”
“I created my recipe from my style reminiscence of Koueider,” she says.
Basbousa Bel Ashta (Semolina Cake With Ashta Cream Filling)
This version of basbousa is filled with a rich clotted cream and drenched in a rose-scented syrup.
Most of Koueider’s areas function a storefront with a counter the place you inform the workers what measurement field you need after which ask them to fill it with the treats on show—they’re meant to be takeout solely, although a few of the mall shops have tables and seats.
There are literally two Koueiders in Cairo throughout the road from one another—one for the pastries and the opposite for ice lotions in conventional flavors like pistachio, mastic, and strawberry. They’re generally known as booza, Egyptian ”fluffy ice cream, not custard-based ice cream,” she notes, and they’re completely price sampling when you’re within the space.
Mansour, nonetheless, nonetheless goes again to the identical blue-and-white-tiled Koueider in Heliopolis, the place the founder’s {photograph} has at all times held on the wall as if he’s nonetheless watching over the place.
Markets
Khan el-Khalili
El-Gamaleya, El Gamaliya, Cairo Governorate 4331302
No Web site
Severe Eats / Bloomberg / Contributor
You’ll be able to’t go to Cairo with out experiencing an Egyptian souk, a heady cacophony of hawking and haggling over the whole lot from colourful materials to family requirements. After which there are the spice markets, the place the entire coloration spectrum appears to be represented within the mounds of powders and dried vegetation in plastic tubs organized in tiers alongside the entrance of every vendor’s stall. Most are in Outdated Cairo, however essentially the most picturesque could also be Khan el-Khalili, the place you possibly can store for ornate lamps and brass platters below moody Islamic arches and hovering minarets that ship out the requires prayer.
“In order for you a style of life in Outdated Cairo, you need to go to the spice market, the gold market, the silver market, and the leather-based market in Khan el-Khalili within the oldest district in Cairo,” says Mansour. “It’s a cobblestone avenue, it’s rowdy, it’s loud, it’s loopy, nevertheless it’s an unbelievable mixture of alluring senses.” There, the odor of tannins from the leather-based market mingles with the spice market’s prickly scent of cumin and mastic and the perfume-y perfume of anise and hibiscus, all as you munch on a steaming, savory kebab from a avenue cart. “It’s the guts of Cairo,” says Mansour.
Getty Photos / Bloomberg / Contributor
Mansour says 90% of the spices in her pantry come from Cairo’s markets, however strongly recommends that you just be sure that what you purchase and intend to take again to your house nation is vacuum-sealed. This manner, you gained’t have to elucidate to customs in your return house about any bugs that infested your spices.
“In the event you inform the seller you’re touring, they provides you with vacuum-sealed packets,” she says.
Road Meals
The town’s avenue meals choices have modified because the Arab Spring, based on Mansour. What was easy, colorfully painted carts have grow to be greater carts or stalls that now embody tables and chairs on the street the place you sit down and wait in your meals to be dropped at you.
At these locations, Mansour likes to order ful medames (stewed fava beans), ta’ameyah (Egyptian falafel), Egyptian-spiced potato chips, and Egyptian-spiced pickles (a well-liked spice mix in Egypt is dukkah, which is a combination of sesame, cumin, coriander, black pepper, salt, and pounded hazelnuts). Or she would possibly order shawarma, which has grow to be an enormous factor in Cairo avenue meals during the last decade—the Egyptian variant is made with an onion-juice marinade and is served not in a flatbread however in a brioche roll, a nod to the nation’s Greek and Italian influences, she says.
“Egyptian shawarma is superb, they usually make the bread from scratch, and normally it has a whole lot of tahini, not hummus, which is a Palestinian and Syrian factor,” she says.
Mansour doesn’t have a specific place she goes for shawarma and recommends guests exit and discover their very own favourite. “It’s very onerous to discover a dangerous shawarma place in Cairo proper now as a result of the competitors’s so fierce,” she says.
Going the Further Nile
One remaining phrase of recommendation: If you wish to get the total Egyptian meals expertise, avoid the set-lunch vacationer traps that include the Pyramid excursions. As an alternative, take the following pointers from our resident native, Nermine Mansour, to coronary heart and study to eat just like the Cairenes actually do.
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