Where and What to Eat on the Streets of Cairo

By 8am, the queue outside Borai already stretches along the pavement. Office workers in pressed shirts stand shoulder-to-shoulder with market traders and delivery drivers, all drawn to a hole-in-the-wall kitchen no bigger than a garage. Out front, a bubbling vat of oil crackles away, sending the aroma of garlic and fresh herbs drifting down the street. In one of the world’s largest cities, Cairo has no shortage of places to grab breakfast on the go, but this is the one locals are happy to wait in line for.

Inside, seven brothers — not related by blood, but all nursed by the same woman and so considered family in Egypt — work with choreographed precision. Fava beans, soaked for 12 hours, disappear into a grinder with onions, garlic, leeks and fistfuls of parsley until the mixture turns green enough to stain the fingers. The paste is shaped into little patties, scattered with sesame seeds and baptised with a hiss in hot oil.

“This is Egypt’s answer to falafel,” my tour guide Lamiaa Taher says as we collect our taamiya sandwiches, wrapped in paper, from across the stainless-steel counter. I tear one open, revealing a steaming, spongey centre beneath its crisp bronze crust. They’re wrapped in warm baladi flatbread with a drizzle of nutty tahina, the Egyptian version of tahini, made from ground sesame seeds, lemon, garlic and orange blossom water. It’s the fresher, more herbaceous cousin of chickpea falafel. “Once you eat it, you don’t need anything else,” Lamiaa warns with an easy grin, her face framed by a neat black bob.

Which presents something of a challenge. This is the first of several stops on a street food tour through downtown Cairo with female-founded company Bellies En-Route. With little more than an Arabic sign above the door and no online presence, Borai is the kind of place I wouldn’t have discovered on my own. It’s a fitting introduction to Egyptian cooking, a cuisine rooted in agricultural traditions and shaped by influences from the Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa, heavy on cumin and coriander.

As we wander deeper into Wust El-Balad, a timeworn belle époque quarter, I momentarily forget I’m in Egypt. Broad boulevards and apartment blocks with decorative wrought-iron balconies feel distinctly Parisian. “That’s exactly what Khedive Ismail wanted,” Lamiaa says. Inspired by time spent in France, the Egyptian ruler remodelled the district in the late 19th century in a European style.

Our next stop could easily pass for a Greek taverna, with its whitewashed stone walls and cobalt-blue shutters, despite the incongruous name of Fish & Chips. But it serves what Lamiaa calls the queen of Egyptian food: molokhia. “It’s not a soup, not a stew; it’s something entirely its own,” she says. Finely chopped jute leaves are simmered in a broth until they develop a glossy, silky consistency, then finished with ghee, garlic and coriander. Said to date back to the pharaohs, its rich, earthy flavour soon wins me over. I scrape the bowl clean beneath black-and-white portraits of Egypt’s silver-screen icons from the 1930s, 40s and 50s — a reminder of when Cairo was known as the Hollywood of the Middle East.

No Egyptian meal is complete without a cup of Arabic coffee, so we head to Wardet El Yaman, a tiny corner cafe that’s been brewing it since 1925. “This is the kind of coffee you’d be served in someone’s home,” Lamiaa says, handing me a small cup of what looks like green tea, scented with cardamom and served with a date on the side to sweeten things. Traditionally associated with Bedouin communities, the beans are sun-dried before roasting, giving the coffee a heady kick.

Finally, we stop to pick up syrupy treats laid out on round trays in glass cases at a sweet shop near Tawfikia Square, a pedestrianised quarter lined with cafes, bakeries and food stalls. “Cairo’s love affair with sweets goes back to the Fatimid dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 969 to 1171,” Lamiaa says. With sugar an expensive luxury at the time, elaborate confectionery became a status symbol of wealth and power. “Many of the sweets still sold here today date back to that era.” I leave with a box of basbousa, a semolina cake scented with rosewater — one of the fragrant flavours that arrived in Cairo along medieval trade routes.

In Cairo, history is as much in its neighbourhood cafes and breakfast stalls as it is in its monuments and museums. To experience it, you just need to know where to look.