Travel: Dine like an Egyptian

Ask Egyptians about their country’s national dish and more often than not, they’ll say its koshary, a hodgepodge of macaroni, vermicelli and rice mixed with lentils, garbanzos and fried onions. It’s topped with tomato sauce and spiced as you like with hot pepper oil.

The problem for travelers is that a koshary (KO-shar-ee) meal, filling and cheap, is not so easy to find in hotels and upscale restaurants where Egyptian dishes more often than not play a bit role to Lebanese and Syrian items: shwarma, various meat kebabs and salads.

To get the really tasty, chewy mountain of koshary beloved by Egyptians, it’s best to go where they go: street-side holes-in- the-wall that specialize in the dish. You may want to supplement the experience with post-meal visits to storefront dessert shops and tea houses. In short, dine like Egyptians do on their nights out -- graze.

My favorite koshary place is Sayed Hanafy, located in what Cairenes call downtown, an area east of the Nile River modeled on 19th-century Paris. It was once an area of chic eateries, bars, casinos and hotels where business people, aristocrats, politicians and starlets mingled but which is now run down.

Nocturnal Charm

Downtown still has its charms, especially at night when the grime and peeling paint is not so clearly visible: ornate French architecture, plazas and palaces, art deco movie theaters and sidewalk cafes line the streets and plazas.

At Sayed Hanafy, you can eat either inside a boxcar-sized dining room lined with Versailles-style mirrors or out front on Orabi Square. The portions come in two sizes -- large, for a little more than a dollar or about six Egyptian pounds, and small, for about 40 cents or four pounds -- served in enamel or metal bowls. Koshary is the fastest of fast foods. The ingredients are already in piles by the kitchen, just waiting to be larded onto the bowl by the server.