Egypt What To Eat
Cairo and Alexandria have a good selection of restaurants, but smaller towns have a rather limited choice. Set menus and buffets in hotels offer an international cuisine with the occasional Egyptian dish, but Egyptian food is definitely worth trying out. Apart from the regular fare, five-star hotels often fly in European chefs for week-long ethnic extravaganzas.
The traditional hot and cold drinks served in coffeehouses are delicious and thought to be healthy. If you want decaffeinated coffee then you will have to bring your own. Fresh juices such as orange, mango, strawberry, pomegranate, carrot, banana and lime, depending on the season, are available in juice bars everywhere except in major hotels.
There are several local beers, including Stella and Saqqara Beer, all of which are perfectly pleasant and drinkable. The adventurous may encounter a mild home-brew called buza, which is recorded to have been made in the Third Dynasty. Egyptians were making wine even earlier. Reds include Omar Khayyam, and Obélisque Rouge; while rosé comes as Rubis d'Egypt and Obélisque Rosetta. The whites Cru des Ptolemées and Blanc d'Alexandrie (Obélisque) are both dry and good with fish or seafood. Obélisque wines are produced in Al-Gouna on the Red Sea Coast from a high quality grape concentrate from Sicily, while the other wines are made with grapes grown in Egypt. The more expensive Grand Marquis, white and red, is even better, and in 2002 Egypt launched its first "champagne", Aida. Al-Gouna also produces Sainte Cathérine liqueur which resembles a port. Local spirits are quite popular among Egyptians. They include several kinds of brandy and various versions of zibeeb or araq, the Arab world's version of ouzo.
Egyptians, like other Arabs, enjoy eating mezze whilst chatting around a table with family and friends. Mezze are hors d'oeuvres, salads and dips, served as a starter with drinks or as a meal. Dishes keep on arriving, hot and cold, and are eaten with the fingers or scooped up in pieces of flat bread. Here is an alphabetical list of the most common dishes: baba ghanough is tahinah mixed with garlic and roasted eggplant.Fuul mesdames is a stew of fava beans, served with egg, meat, yoghurt or white cheese. Hummus is a paste of chick peas, garlic, tahinah and lemon, topped with parsley, and sometimes served topped with tiny bits of fried lamb. Kibbeh is a fried ball of cracked wheat stuffed with ground beef. Kibda is fried chopped calf's or lamb's liver. Kofta is minced lamb. Salata baladi is chopped lettuce, tomato and cucumber with lots of parsley and lemon. Meloukhia is a stew of spinach-like greens and chicken or rabbit. Tahinah (a sesame paste mixed with water, oil and lemon juice) served as a dip or a sauce. Taameya are deep-fried fava-bean burgers. Torshi are pickled vegetables. Waraa eynab are stuffed vine leaves.
Street food in Egypt is often delicious but take care if your stomach is un-acclimatised, especially with meat and fish dishes. Koshari, a mixture of rice, macaroni, fried onions, lentils and chickpeas, topped with a spicy tomato sauce, is popular, as are ful (stewed fava beans) and tamia(falafel). A wide variety of sandwiches are available, filled with pasturma (a local dried meat), white cheese, chopped liver, kidneys and tameya. Roast corn, chicken soup and baked sweet potatoes are popular snacks in winter.