Four floors dedicated to one dish — Egypt's national plate of pasta, rice, lentils, chickpeas and fried onion.
Koshary is Egypt’s national dish and it is entirely carbohydrate: macaroni, rice and brown lentils layered in a bowl, topped with chickpeas, a spiced tomato sauce, and a heap of crisp fried onions. Two sauces come on the side — daqqa, a sharp garlic and vinegar liquid, and shatta, chilli.
It costs almost nothing, it is filling to the point of comedy, and it is vegan by default.
The dish is probably nineteenth century, assembled from Indian khichri brought by British Indian troops, Italian pasta, and Egyptian lentils and rice — which makes it an accidental monument to the colonial period, eaten by everyone, every day.
Abou Tarek
The most famous koshary house in Egypt, on Champollion Street in Downtown, run by the same family since 1950 and now occupying several floors of gleaming tiled dining rooms with staff in uniform.
You choose a size, it arrives in under a minute, you mix everything together thoroughly, and you eat it. There is no menu to speak of. Rice pudding and roz bi laban for afterwards if you have room, which you will not.
It is busier and slightly more expensive than the neighbourhood places, and the quality is genuinely good. It has become a stop on the tourist circuit without becoming a tourist restaurant.
The others
Koshary El Tahrir and Zooba are the modern chains, cleaner and pricier. Sayed Hanafy and the small unnamed places in Sayyida Zeinab and Abdeen do it for a fraction and are frequently better.
Any koshary shop with a queue of Egyptians at one in the afternoon is a good one. There are thousands.
Other Cairo street food worth finding
Ful medames — slow-cooked fava beans with oil, lemon and cumin — is breakfast for most of the country, sold from carts with a distinctive round pot.
Ta’ameya, Egyptian falafel, made with fava beans rather than chickpeas, greener inside and better.
Hawawshi, spiced minced meat baked inside bread. Shawarma. Fiteer, a layered pastry, sweet or savoury. Molokhia, a green soup of jute leaves that divides visitors sharply.
Om Ali, bread pudding with milk, nuts and coconut, for dessert.
Practicalities
Cash. Very cheap even by Egyptian standards.
Hygiene at the established places is fine. If you have a delicate stomach, be more careful with juice from street carts and unpeeled salad than with hot cooked food.
Ramadan changes opening hours completely — most places close through the day and open after iftar.
