Culture · Sep 11, 2026
Egyptian food: what to order and where
The three dishes you should not leave without, and the meal hotels replace with croissants
Egyptian food is bean-heavy, bread-centred, generously spiced and very cheap. It is also almost entirely absent from the hotel buffet, which is where most visitors eat it — or rather, do not. This is a guide to what to order, where the good version is, and which three dishes you should not leave without having eaten.
The three you must eat
If you eat nothing else Egyptian on this trip, eat these. They are the national diet, they cost almost nothing, and every Egyptian has an opinion about who does them best.
Koshary: rice, lentils, pasta, chickpeas, tomato sauce and fried onion. Photo: Dina Said, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Koshary is the national dish and it should not work. Rice, brown lentils, macaroni and chickpeas in one bowl, under a garlicky tomato sauce, topped with crisp fried onions, with a sharp vinegar-garlic daqqa and a chilli sauce on the side to add yourself. It is entirely carbohydrate, entirely vegan, and it is superb. Go to a dedicated koshary house rather than a general restaurant; the good ones sell nothing else.
Ful medames, the breakfast of the country. Photo: Marsupium, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ful medames is stewed fava beans, mashed at the table with olive oil, lemon, cumin and whatever else the cart has — tahina, tomato, chilli, a boiled egg. It is breakfast for most of Egypt, sold from carts from before dawn, and it is what people eat before a day's work. Order it with bread and no cutlery.
Taameya is Egypt's falafel and it is not the same thing you have had elsewhere. It is made from fava beans, not chickpeas, which makes it greener inside, softer and more herbal. Eaten hot, within minutes of frying, stuffed into bread with salad and tahina. Cold taameya is a waste of a good breakfast.
Breakfast, which is the best meal
A full Egyptian breakfast: bread, beans, cheese, eggs, and half a dozen small dishes. Photo: Reem Al-Kashif, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
An Egyptian breakfast is a table rather than a plate: ful, taameya, white cheese, roumy cheese, tomato and cucumber, olives, eggs fried with tomato, tahina, and aish baladi — the wholemeal flatbread that puffs in the oven and arrives hot enough to be uncomfortable to hold. It is the meal Egypt does best and the one hotels replace with croissants.
If your hotel is all-inclusive, go out for breakfast once anyway. It costs less than the tip you left yesterday.
Book what you just read about
Tours from this article — private, with a licensed guide, and priced per person.
