Eating and drinking in Egypt

The dishes worth knowing before you arrive

Koshari is the national dish and the one to try first: rice, lentils and macaroni layered together, topped with spiced tomato sauce, chickpeas and a heap of fried onions, with garlic vinegar and chili sauce added to taste. Entirely vegetarian, costs very little, and the good koshari houses have been doing one thing for decades.

Ful medames — slow-cooked fava beans with oil, lemon and cumin — is what Egypt eats for breakfast, and has since the pharaohs. Ta'ameya is Egyptian falafel, made with fava beans rather than chickpeas, which makes it greener inside and, we would argue, better.

Molokhia divides visitors: a soup of finely chopped jute leaves, garlic and coriander, with a texture people either love immediately or never come round to. Try it anyway. Mahshi is vegetables stuffed with herbed rice. Hawawshi is spiced minced meat baked inside bread. Feteer meshaltet is a layered pastry served sweet or savory, and watching it made is half the point.

To cook them yourself, our cooking class and market tour in Cairo makes koshari, molokhia and mahshi, and can be added to any Cairo stay, such as the five-day Cairo Private Escape.

For dessert, om ali — pastry, milk, nuts and raisins baked together. It is Egypt's bread pudding and it is very good.

What to drink

Karkade, hibiscus tea, served hot in winter and iced in summer, deep red and slightly tart. Asab, fresh sugarcane juice, pressed in front of you at street stands for almost nothing. Shai, strong black tea, usually with more sugar than you expect unless you ask. Turkish-style coffee, which comes sweetened by default — say mazbout for medium or sada for none. In winter, sahlab: hot, thick, milky, topped with nuts and cinnamon.

Alcohol is available and this surprises people. Egypt brews its own beer — Stella has been made here since the 1890s — and produces wine in the Nile Delta. You will find both in hotels, licensed restaurants, Nile boats and the Red Sea resorts, though not in ordinary neighborhood cafés. During Ramadan, service is restricted in most public places but continues in hotels. If wine matters to you on your trip, tell us and we will book accordingly.

Eating well without getting ill

Most visitors are fine. The ones who are not usually got unlucky rather than reckless, and the precautions are simple.

Drink bottled water and skip ice outside hotels and established restaurants. Eat where it is busy — high turnover means food that has not been sitting. Hot, freshly cooked food is safer than anything lukewarm, which is an argument for street koshari and against a buffet that has been out a while. Fruit you peel yourself is fine. Salad washed in tap water is the classic culprit, so be a little careful with it in the first few days while your stomach adjusts.

Your guide eats in these places every week and will steer you. That is worth more than any list — the useful knowledge is not "avoid street food", it is which particular koshari place on which particular street.

Vegetarian, vegan and other requirements

Egypt is one of the easiest countries in the world to be vegetarian in, because the staples got there first. Koshari, ful, ta'ameya, mahshi, baba ghanoush, tahini and the whole bread-and- mezze tradition are plant-based without trying to be. Vegan is slightly harder — butter and ghee turn up in cooking — but entirely workable with notice.

Pork is largely unavailable outside international hotels. Halal is the default everywhere. For allergies, celiac disease or anything else that matters medically, tell us when you inquire rather than on arrival: we brief the guide, the hotels and the Nile boat in advance, in Arabic, which is considerably more reliable than explaining it at each table.