Almost as soon as I walked in I was touched by the husband and wife playing chess at one of the tables. It turns out that the wife was also the only other woman in the place besides myself and also the chef. The place was male dominated, but everyone was extremely polite to me. One of the problems I encountered was the language barrier. The male servers, though very polite and eager to help me, spoke no English. Luckily one of the other patrons translated for me.

Egyptian food is apparently vegetarian friendly and relies heavily on legumes and vegetables, crops common to the Nile Valley. A lot of the dishes on the menu were familiar to me from other Middle Eastern cuisines like baba ghannouj, shawerma, kabob, etc. I’m not sure how these dishes differ from other countries in the Middle East.

The one dish that stood out was foul mudames (Ful medames), which I ordered. They served it on a plate accompanied by a basket of bread, similar to pita. Apparently this dish is very typical and has an interesting history. Ful translates to “fava beans” and medames means to “buried.” To me the dish tasted similar to refried beans and was rather rustic. Apparently this dish was originally a peasant food, but has now been fully incorporated into the Egyptian diet. The dish is commonly eaten for breakfast and has been described as “like a stone in the stomach.” The bread I was served is also a typical staple of all Egyptian meals which is more heartier and glutinous than typical pita bread and called Eish Masri or Eish Baladi. “Eish” comes from the verb “to live,” which reflects its importance to Egyptian life. I found the dish to be comforting, simple, bland, and filling. I ate the foul mudames using the pita since there were no utensils on the table – I assumed this was how it was done. I also found this recipe, I’m not sure if it is legimatimate or not.

I was mostly struck by the variety of drinks on the menu rather than the variety of food. Maybe this is because they have a full page of hookah flavors and the restaurant focuses more on people relaxing and drinking. Since it was cold outside I tried Cinnamon with Milk. It came in a glass and was very hot milk with cinnamon in it. It was not sweet and I wondered if I should have added sugar to it (there was some on the table) but I wasn’t sure. Perhaps I picked a boring drink to try, but I was craving cinnamon that day. Their other hot drink options included mint tea, fenugreek with milk, black fenugreek, anise, milk hot chocolate, coffees, teas, hot karkadi, etc. Their cold drink options included karkadi, carob, and tamarind. I wasn’t familiar with the word karkadi, but in English the translation is Hibiscus. Karkadi beverages are apparently very common in North Africa and were said to be the preferred drink of pharaohs. Wikipedia states that in Egypt, “wedding celebrations are traditionally toasted with a glass of hibiscus tea…[and] karkade is used as a means to lower blood pressure if consumed in high amounts.” So, something to consider trying.

I also decided to order some pastries. They gave me a rather large selection of six pastries for $5.95. These two pieces of three types. These were served warm. The first of these was baspusa (Basbousa), which is made of semolina soaked in syrup. To me it tasted like an extremely sweet and moist pastry with little other flavor. The semolina was soft and did not have the semolina texture of many Indian sweets I am used to. The second pastry was konafa (kanafeh), which was like a bunch of thin semolina noodles fried, soaked in syrup, and then cut into a square. I found this more pleasing than the baspusa because it had more texture. The final item was baklava, but formed into a donut shape with pistachios in the center and being baklava, was delicious. They also had rice pudding, flan, and mahalabia, all types of custard which I did not try.

For a week night, it wasn’t that full aside from the men smoking hookahs along the walls. I definitely smelled like hookah after I left, but I suppose that’s the nature of the restaurant.

Total: $16.22 excluding tax (one entree, one beverage, dessert selection)