What to eat and drink in Egypt: dishes, etiquette and dietary tips

Egyptian cooking is built on beans, bread, rice and lentils, with grilled meat and pigeon for feasts. That means the cheapest food is also the everyday food, and the dishes most visitors remember are the ones sold from a counter rather than a dining room.

Breakfast is ful medames — fava beans cooked down with oil, cumin and lemon — with ta'ameya, the green fava-bean falafel, and a stack of aish baladi flatbread. Lunch is often molokhia, a jute-leaf soup over rice, or mahshi, vegetables and vine leaves stuffed with herbed rice. Dinner is when grills appear: kofta and kebab sold by weight, hawawshi (bread stuffed with spiced minced beef) from a bakery oven, and hamam mahshi, pigeon stuffed with freekeh or rice.

In Alexandria and along the Suez and Red Sea coast, sayadeya — fish with caramelised-onion rice — is the local order, and fish is usually priced by weight, so ask before it goes on the grill. In Upper Egypt and Nubia, expect simpler bread and stews, including sun-dried aish shamsi. In Sinai and the western deserts, Bedouin cooking means zarb, meat cooked in a sealed pit underground, and fire-baked bread.

Finish with om Ali, a bread pudding with milk, nuts and raisins, and feteer meshaltet, the layered pastry eaten with honey or cheese.

Street counters are the value play. A bowl of koshari or a plate of ful with bread is a full meal for the price of a coffee in Europe, and ta'ameya sandwiches are cheaper still. Prices drift with inflation, so treat the bands below as 2026 estimates and check the board before ordering.

Sit-down grills and seafood restaurants are a different tier: meat and fish are sold by weight, so the bill depends on what you point at. Ask for the price per kilo first — this is normal and no one minds. Hotel and Nile-cruise dining is the most expensive option and rarely the best food.

Tipping is expected and small: a few pounds for a street vendor, around 10 percent in a restaurant unless a service charge is already on the bill.

Street food in Egypt is cheap and generally good, and the same rule as anywhere applies: pick the busy stall where food is cooked in front of you and handed over hot. Koshari shops with a queue, ful carts at breakfast and bakeries pulling hawawshi out of the oven are all safe bets. Be more careful with pre-cooked trays sitting out in the afternoon heat, unrefrigerated dairy desserts, and salads or cut fruit that may have been rinsed in tap water.

Tap water is not for drinking. Sealed bottled water is sold at every kiosk and is cheap; hotels and many restaurants also serve filtered water. Use bottled water for brushing your teeth if your stomach is sensitive, and go easy on ice in drinks from small street carts, where the source is unknown.

If you do get an upset stomach, oral rehydration salts from any pharmacy are the first response, and most cases settle in a few days. See a doctor for blood in your stool, a high fever, or symptoms lasting more than three days. Check current advice before you travel — see egypt vaccinations for travelers.

Tea (shai) is the default order, usually black and sweet, and ahwa — the traditional coffeehouse — serves strong Turkish-style coffee. Karkadeh, a deep-red hibiscus infusion, is served hot or cold and is the drink to try at least once; it is everywhere in Aswan and Luxor. Sugarcane juice (asab) pressed to order is a cheap street favourite, best taken from a busy press where the machine is running constantly.

Alcohol is legal for those 21 and over, but availability is limited: hotels, Nile cruise boats and licensed bars and restaurants are the main places to find beer or wine, and some restaurants do not serve it at all. Drinking in the street is not the norm. During Ramadan, alcohol sales are more restricted and many restaurants close in daylight hours; iftar begins after the sunset call to prayer, and joining a hotel or local iftar is one of the better food experiences of the year. For dates, see Egypt festivals and public holidays.

Eat and pass dishes with your right hand. Bread, aish, doubles as the spoon for stews and dips. A host will push more food on you; leaving a little on the plate signals you are full, and cleaning it completely can invite another serving. In a traditional ahwa or a mosque-adjacent area, keep dress and behaviour modest — see Egypt etiquette and culture for the wider picture.

Vegetarians have an easy time: koshari, ful, ta'ameya and Coptic fasting food (siyami) are meat- and dairy-free, and saying 'ana nabati' plus asking for the siyami version covers most situations. Halal is the default for meat; pork appears only in a few shops serving Christians and in some hotels. Gluten-free is the hard one, because bread accompanies nearly everything and koshari contains pasta — rice, grills and stews are the safe route. Nut and sesame allergies need care: nuts turn up in desserts and some rice dishes, and tahini and sesame are widespread. Carry a written card in Arabic naming your allergen; the parent guide has the phrase and the key words.

Cairo is the best single food city: koshari shops and ful carts downtown, grilled meat in the older quarters, and ahwas for coffee and people-watching. Alexandria is the seafood stop, with fish restaurants along the corniche where you choose your fish by weight. In the south, Aswan and Luxor add Nubian stews and karkadeh to the standard menu, and the Red Sea resorts at Hurghada, El Gouna and Sharm el-Sheikh lean on hotel and international dining with local grills alongside.

If you are planning the trip around food, give Cairo at least two evenings and one breakfast, and keep one lunch free in Alexandria for fish. See best places to visit in egypt and best time to visit egypt for how to fit that into a route.