What to Eat in Egypt: A First-Timer's Food Guide

Egyptian cuisine rarely gets the international recognition it deserves, but it's genuinely distinctive and worth building part of your trip around, not just a side note to the monuments. Koshari is arguably the national dish and the essential first meal for any visitor — a carb-heavy mix of rice, lentils, macaroni and chickpeas, topped with crispy fried onions and a tangy tomato-vinegar sauce, sold everywhere from street stalls to sit-down restaurants for just a few dollars. Ful medames, slow-cooked fava beans usually eaten for breakfast with bread, oil and lemon, is a genuine daily staple rather than a tourist novelty. Molokhia, a garlicky green soup made from jute leaves, usually served over rice with chicken or rabbit, is one of Egypt's oldest documented dishes, with roots traced back to ancient Egyptian cuisine. For something sweeter, Egyptian desserts lean heavily on syrup and nuts: konafa (crispy shredded pastry with sweet cheese or nut filling) and basbousa (a dense semolina cake soaked in syrup) are both widely available and worth trying fresh from a proper dessert shop rather than a hotel buffet. Combined with strong Egyptian tea, hibiscus juice (karkadeh), and fresh sugarcane juice sold on nearly every street corner, food ends up being one of the more affordable and genuinely memorable parts of an Egypt trip.