Egyptian Cuisine

Before moving on to some of the adventures you can experience while in Egypt (cab ride jokes aside), I thought I would round-out a description of daily life in Cairo. I've already talked about finding a place to live and getting around the city, so I thought here I would stop to take a minute and describe the culinary delights of Cairo. And here I make the distinction of Cairo, not Egypt, because for anyone who likes sea food, a trip to Alexandria would be well worth the effort. In that coastal city, you can feast to your heart's content for hardly any money.

One evening while in Alexandria, a friend that knew the area well took a group of about ten or twelve of us to a fabulous, well-known restaurant named Abu Ashraf where we picked our own sea food as we walked in the door. We chose from crabs (one for each of us, of course), salmon, shrimp, and a few other fish. At our long table in the back, we proceeded to add a few salads for us to share, and baskets with local Egyptian naan-like bread along with heaping plates of rice and possibly some chicken slices were brought to our table. The food just kept coming and it was all fresh, local and exquisitely delicious. After we finished, we were given the bill (which also included a pepsi for each of us and water for all) which was about 360£E (Egyptian pounds) total .... this translates into about $62 and was to be divided amongst the ten or so of us. We tipped heavily.

Cairo, on the other hand, is a slightly different story. Located farther inland, it doesn't have the same access to fresh meat and fish. While you can find them from vendors, you really have to search hard and know where to look. What are in abundant supply are fresh fruit and vegetables. The most delectable bananas, mangoes, strawberries, oranges, eggplants, peppers, zucchini, and more can be found in little vendors' carts peppered throughout the entire city. Lemons are sold at the vegetable stand in baggies of six or eight because they are so small; their diameter is probably no bigger than that of a quarter and they are all perfectly round and immensely flavorable. As a biproduct of having such fresh fruit available, it's always better to buy juice from small juice vendors instead of from the Metro grocery stores. The vendors keep large supplies of fresh seasonal fruit around and it's a BYOB set-up (Bring Your Own Bottle). My flatmates and I used to go to a vendor with empty 2-liter water bottles and walk away with fresh squeezed blood-red orange juice, regular orange juice and anything else that sounded good at the time. You can also buy juice by the glass and my two favorites from restaurants (vendors had more intricate mixtures) were mango juice - because it was thick and chunky with mango bits - and lemon juice. Both were very cool and refreshing, especially in the heat of summer.

But even these cannot be the staple of every meal. The most available foods - native to Egypt - are not for the faint-hearted. Atkins would not have fared well in Cairo. The plus side is that many are quite tasty and really cheap, even if you don't factor in the exchange rate.

One of the cheapest (small ~ 2£E or $0.35; large ~ 5£E or $0.86), most filling meals you can buy in a hurry is koshiri and is a mixture of white rice, macaroni noodles, chick peas, and marinara sauce, topped with copious amounts of lentils and fried onions. To this you can either add hot sauce or a garlic/lemon sort of sauce (which I recommend to give this dish some moisture). In fact, koshiri is so popular that while sometimes offered in restaurants, it's easier to find in little fast food stores dedicated almost solely to the dish.

Ta'amiyya - which is even less expensive (at about .35 £E or $0.06 per sandwich) - is also very popular, especially if you're in a hurry. It is a small pita sandwich filled with a little lettuce and tomato surrounding fried crushed bean cakes that for some reason are a really nifty color green. There was a little sandwich stand two blocks down from my school that was no more than a hole in the wall. It was take-out only so the quickest way to find it was to look for a large group of Egyptians crowded around what could have easily been mistaken for a blank wall. Inside was a long, narrow kitchen, barely wide enough for two people to stand next to one another but it functioned well and quickly.

Two more very popular small dishes that you can order in restaurants as part of a barrage of appetizer-like choices are fuul, and fried batinghen, which is the Arabic word for "eggplant". Fuul is beans that have been so deep fried, there is sometimes a layer of oil about 1 centimeter thick floating along the top (fuul also comes in small pita sandwiches and tends to not be quite as oily). It's eaten with local bread, either regular or baked until it comes out in crispy chip form.

If you're worried, there are also restaurants from other Arab countries (Lebanese food abounds in Cairo and is very good) as well as some American staples so you shouldn't run into too many problems. But my philosophy is - to rearrange a famous quote - "When in Cairo, do as the Cairenes do" and if you're ever there, I recommend trying some of these dishes which are really quite yummy.

One final note. The picture above is of me eating a dish my friends and I ordered without knowing exactly what it was. It turned out to be infinitely intriguing. In a few days, I will put up another food post. See if you can guess between now and then (when I reveal the secret) what I am eating.

Getting Around Cairo - Part II - The Process of the Cab

If the ingenuity of the automobile that ferries you around from place is amazing, the process of the cab ride is mind-boggling.

When hailing a cab, there are many factors you need to take into account. "Where am I going and where am I now? Is it rush hour? How much am I willing to pay based on those factors? Do I care if there's someone already in the cab?" As many travel books warn, meters in cabs are more decorative than anything else. Sometimes a cabbie will reset the meter for show when you step inside the cab, and if the meter is really fancy, it might actually count off some numbers until it gets stuck again. But no one actually uses them to negotiate your fee. So in order to roughly calculate how much to pay, you need to think about the distance you're travelling and how long it might take to get there based on traffic patterns. As for the other person in the cab, never let another face in the window deter you from trying to flag down a cab. Remember that the roof only has a short rack on it for luggage. Sometimes there's a little sign that says "taxi" but it won't light up and drivers are usually willing to take two or three fares at a time to maximize profits.

Once inside the cab, the fun begins. Traffic in Cairo does not resemble anything you might be used to. The closest analogy that I can come up with is the running of the bulls in Spain going in slow motion. Most streets are one way and have faded lines denoting lanes but it's my suspicion is that they were drawn by a child with white chalk long ago. As though being herded by some giant shepherd, cars will fit any little space they can find and some roads that should only be two or three lanes wide wind up being six or seven cars wide. It's like trying to watch people all merge at the same time all the time when they're stopped at various intersections.

When the cars are actually in motion, it gets even better. The same herding process is in effect, only at a faster pace. Driving along on the left side of the street (remember they're one way, mostly) doesn't necessarily mean you're going left, or even going straight. It's within everyone's right to want to make a sharp right turn at any given moment from 3 lanes over. Not everyone is happy about it, though.

While in a cab one day with a friend of mine, I experienced this first-hand. Our driver had us on the left side of the road, despite the fact that we needed to go right. A cab directly to our right, however, thought that going left was the smart thing to do, so we gradually converged as we moved down the road. Now we were both in the wrong, but I guess there's a pecking order to who goes first and our cabbie was not pleased about not being at the top of that order. The other cab cut us off and kept going.

Well. Our driver wasn't about to stand for that. He stopped the car, got out, and by golly went over to give that driver a piece of his mind.

In fact, he was so annoyed that he forgot to put the parking break on before getting out of the car. After a few seconds, the car began to roll. There were no other cars on the road, so this wasn't too big of a problem, but considering that we were slowly orienting ourselves perpendicular to the direction of traffic, it would soon become an issue, so I decided to pull up the parking brake. Leaning forward, I couldn't find it and I remembered that very often these cars were built from kits meaning that having knowledge of one cab, you knew where most things were in another. Sometimes the emergency brake was down by the pedals, so I just assumed I had no shot at reaching it and that it would probably be easier to get out of the car. However, I was on the infamous left side of the car with a locked door and no lock and my friend didn't look like she was interested in going anywhere. As we started to slowly pick up a little speed, I thought I could just steer the car nicely into the curb where we could wait out the fight. So I began steering the car from the back seat. But we weren't really travelling that fast and no matter what direction we went in, we were bound to hit a curb eventually so at my friend's suggestion, I sat back down to enjoy the ride.

We were soon rescued by a passerby that ran over, ripped open the front passenger side door and yanked up on the emergency brake which had been hiding under the armrest. After saving us, he ran over to our driver, still locked in a heated debate, and slowly but firmly steered him back to our car. He got in somewhat ruffled, made no apologies, took the parking brake off and sat in the middle of the intersection (still perpendicular to anyone wanting to pass us) watching the other car. He waited until the other car was pulling away then shouted a phrase I hadn't yet learned in a determined effort to get in the last word. In the end, I guess, he'd won.

This type of behavior is not a-typical but it's not necessarily the norm either. Drivers zip in and out from in between cars and pedestrians alike and sometimes near-accidents happen. But there are rules - albeit a different set that you might be used to - and a sort of unspoken code that everyone adheres to. Once you learn the code, you suffer much less stress, and you tend to shield your eyes less often from the sight of your life flashing before your eyes, or in this case, flashing by the window of your cab.