Best Egyptian Restaurants Around the World

The best-scored egyptian place in each of 4 cities.

Regional variations

Cairo and the Delta

Koshary, ful, ta'ameya, hamam mahshi (stuffed grilled pigeon, a Cairo specialty), and the strong tea-and-shisha culture of the ahwa coffee houses. The bulk of the country's restaurant identity.

Alexandria and the Mediterranean coast

Seafood-led, with grilled fish, fish stews (sayadeyya, fish-and-rice with caramelized onion), shrimp tagen, and the lingering Greek and Italian influences of the cosmopolitan pre-Nasser era.

Upper Egypt / Sa'eed

Heavier meat cooking, especially lamb and pigeon, with simpler bread-and-stew table. Fata (bread-and-broth-and-rice celebration dish) is the regional flagship.

Coptic Christian fasting cuisine

Roughly 200 days a year of Lent and other fasts produce a vegan tradition of bean dishes, pickled vegetables, foul mudammas variations, and dried-fruit desserts that has shaped the modern vegetarian-leaning Egyptian table.

Defining egyptian dishes

Koshary

The Egyptian national street dish: a stack of rice, brown lentils, macaroni, vermicelli, chickpeas, topped with crisp-fried onions, tomato sauce, and a vinegar-garlic dressing. Served with a side of chile-vinegar. Vegan, filling, ubiquitous.

Ful medames

Slow-cooked dried fava beans (often overnight in a tall qedra pot), seasoned with cumin, lemon, garlic, olive oil, chopped tomato, and parsley. The national breakfast, eaten with aish baladi bread.

Ta'ameya

Egyptian falafel, made from soaked dried fava beans (not chickpeas) ground with parsley, cilantro, coriander, cumin, and leek or scallion, then deep-fried. Greener inside than Levantine falafel, often coated in sesame seeds.

Molokhia

Jute-leaf stew, finely chopped and cooked in a chicken, rabbit, or beef broth with garlic and coriander. Served over rice with bread. The texture is famously slimy, like okra; the flavor is grassy and deeply savory.

Mahshi

Stuffed vegetables: zucchini, eggplant, cabbage leaves, vine leaves, peppers, all filled with rice, herbs, and sometimes minced meat, then simmered in tomato broth.

Hamam mahshi

Pigeon stuffed with freekeh (toasted green wheat) or rice and grilled. A Cairo specialty and celebration dish, particularly around Sayyeda Zeinab.

Fattah

Layered celebration dish of toasted bread, rice, meat (usually lamb or beef), and tomato-vinegar-garlic sauce. Eaten at Eid al-Adha and major occasions.

Sayadeyya

Fish-and-rice dish from Alexandria with caramelized onion, cumin, and sometimes turmeric. The rice cooks in the fish stock and takes on a deep amber color.

Aish baladi

The Egyptian flatbread, made from coarse whole wheat and bran, with a hollow pocket. Baked daily in neighborhood bakeries and subsidized by the government. The name 'aish' means 'life.'

Bissara

Pureed fava bean dip with garlic, cumin, parsley, and olive oil, served as part of a mezze spread. The Egyptian cousin of hummus.

Konafa

Shredded phyllo soaked in syrup with cream, cheese, or nuts in the middle. Standard Levantine-Egyptian dessert; the cream-filled version (konafa bil ashta) is particularly Egyptian.

Om Ali

Egyptian bread pudding with milk, cream, raisins, nuts, and coconut, baked until golden. Named after the wife of a 13th-century sultan; the country's signature dessert.

How to order

A koshary lunch is straightforward: walk into a koshary house, sit, and the bowl is brought. The dressings (tomato sauce, vinegar-garlic, chile-vinegar) are on the table, and you adjust to taste. Ful and ta'ameya are typically a breakfast or street-food order, in pita with tahini and salad. At a sit-down Egyptian restaurant, the mezze opens with bissara, baba ghanoush, mahshi, and salads, followed by molokhia or a stuffed pigeon. Tea or hibiscus drink closes the meal.

The rookie mistakes: under-dressing the koshary (the sauces are not optional, they are the dish), declining the chile-vinegar (it lifts everything), being put off by molokhia's slimy texture (it is the point), assuming Egyptian and Levantine cuisines are interchangeable (they share some dishes but Egypt's bean-and-grain core is distinct), and skipping the breakfast (the Egyptian ful-and-ta'ameya breakfast is one of the best vegetarian meals in any cuisine and worth structuring travel around). Coffee is Turkish-style, sweetened in the pot, and served thick; ask for sada (no sugar) or aal-rishaa (light) if you do not want a heavy dose.

What to drink with it

Tea, served strong and very sweet, is the universal table drink. Hibiscus (karkadeh), drunk hot in winter and cold in summer, is the second national beverage. Egyptian beer (Stella, Sakara) is widely available outside religious neighborhoods and pairs well with grilled food. Boza, the fermented millet drink, is a traditional but increasingly rare option. With koshary, water and a squeeze of chile-vinegar is the standard companion. Egyptian wine is limited but improving, with the Gianaclis label producing reds and whites that work with mezze.

Where to eat it

Cairo is the unquestioned center, with koshary houses (Abou Tarek is the famous tourist anchor, but neighborhood spots match it), ful carts, ta'ameya shops, and the great mezze restaurants of Zamalek and Maadi. Alexandria for seafood and the Mediterranean-Egyptian inflection. Outside Egypt, the Egyptian diaspora kitchen is small but present in New York (Bay Ridge), London, and increasingly Dubai. The cuisine has not traveled as widely as Lebanese or Moroccan, which makes Egypt itself the essential trip.

A short history

Egyptian cuisine has the longest documented continuous history of any food tradition, with bread, beer, fish, and bean recipes recorded on tomb walls and papyri going back to the Old Kingdom (c. 2700 BCE). The modern dish vocabulary took shape under Ottoman and then British rule, with koshary itself emerging in the late 19th century from a fusion of Italian pasta, Indian-British lentils, and Egyptian rice. The cuisine is one of the most vegetable-and-legume-led in the world.

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