A mirrored alley café in the bazaar, open more or less continuously since 1797, where Naguib Mahfouz wrote.
El Fishawy has been open in this alley in Khan el-Khalili since 1797, and by local account has closed only for a handful of hours in that time. It is the oldest coffeehouse in Cairo and possibly the oldest continuously operating one anywhere.
It is a narrow slot between buildings, crammed with brass-topped tables, hung with enormous antique mirrors in gilt frames, and open to the sky in places. Smoke from shisha pipes hangs in it constantly.
Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arabic-language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, sat here regularly for decades. The Cairo Trilogy is set in these streets, and the café appears in his work. There is a photograph of him on the wall and a table people claim was his.
He was stabbed in the neck outside his home in 1994 by extremists who objected to one of his novels, survived at 82, and continued coming to Khan el-Khalili with a bodyguard.
What to order
Mint tea, black and very sweet, in a glass. Turkish coffee — specify sada for no sugar, mazbout for medium, ziyada for sweet. Karkade, hibiscus, served hot or iced and deep red. Sahlab in winter.
Shisha if you want it. Prices are posted; check the bill.
The hassle
This is the honest part. El Fishawy sits in the most touristed corner of the most touristed bazaar in Egypt, and while you sit there you will be approached every few minutes — leather wallets, packets of tissues, papyrus, a man who wants to shine shoes you are not wearing.
None of it is threatening and all of it is persistent. La shukran, a small smile and a return to your tea works. Getting irritated does not.
Prices are meaningfully higher than at a neighbourhood ahwa, and the bill sometimes carries additions. Look at it.
Is it worth it
Yes, once, for the room and the two and a quarter centuries. It is not where you will have the best or cheapest tea in Cairo, and it is not pretending to be.
For an ordinary Cairene coffeehouse without any of the above, walk ten minutes out of the bazaar into any side street in Gamaleya or Downtown and sit at the first ahwa with plastic chairs on the pavement. Tea will cost a tenth as much and nobody will try to sell you anything.
Practicalities
Open extremely long hours. Cash. Busy in the evening, and busiest during Ramadan nights, when the whole quarter is at its best.
