Most visitors here eat three meals a day for a fortnight without leaving a hotel buffet, which is a shame, because the buffet is the one thing on this coast that tastes the same as everywhere else. Twelve dishes worth ordering, how eating out actually works, and an honest answer on whether the food will make you ill.
KOSH-a-ree
Rice, macaroni, lentils and chickpeas under a cumin-heavy tomato sauce, topped with fried onions, with garlic vinegar and chilli sauce added to taste at the table.
Egypt’s national dish and the best cheap meal in the country. A dedicated koshari shop does one thing and does it all day; that is the version to eat, not the hotel’s.
fool me-DAM-mes
Slow-cooked fava beans, mashed with oil, lemon and cumin, eaten with bread. The Egyptian breakfast, eaten by everyone, every morning.
Worth having once from a street cart rather than a buffet tray, because the difference is enormous. Ask for it with tahina.
ta-MEY-ya
Egyptian falafel, made from fava beans rather than chickpeas, which makes it greener inside and softer than the Levantine version.
Better than falafel, and this is not a controversial opinion in Egypt. Eaten hot, in bread, with salad and tahina.
sa-ya-DEY-ya
Fish cooked with rice that has been coloured and flavoured with caramelised onion, cumin and stock. A coastal dish rather than a national one.
The thing to order on this coast specifically. A Red Sea town that cannot do sayadeya properly is not trying.
SA-mak MASH-wee
Whole fish, grilled, usually sold by weight — you pick it from ice at the front and it comes back twenty minutes later with bread, salads and tahina.
The best meal on the coast and the one most visitors never have. Agree the weight and the price before it goes on the grill, which is normal here and not rude.
mo-lo-KHEY-ya
A soup of finely chopped jute mallow leaves, garlic-heavy, with a texture that is frankly viscous. Served over rice, often with chicken or rabbit.
Divisive, and honestly so — the texture defeats a lot of visitors. Egyptians love it without reservation. Try it; you will know within a spoonful.
MAH-shee
Vegetables — vine leaves, courgettes, peppers, cabbage — stuffed with herbed rice and slow-cooked.
Reliably good everywhere, and the safest order for a vegetarian outside a tourist menu.
FAT-ta
Layers of crisped bread, rice and garlic-vinegar tomato sauce, usually under lamb or beef. A celebration dish, eaten at Eid.
Heavy in the best way. If you are here over Eid and are invited to eat it, go.
sha-WAR-ma
Meat cut from a vertical spit into bread with salad and tahina. Chicken or beef, rarely lamb.
Everywhere, cheap, and a good test of a place — a busy spit turning over fast is a much better sign than a quiet one.
omm A-lee
Pastry baked in sweetened milk with nuts, coconut and raisins, served hot. Egypt’s bread-and-butter pudding, with a genuinely grim thirteenth-century origin story about the woman it is named after.
The dessert to order. Every hotel does a version; a good local restaurant does it better.
kar-ka-DEH
Hibiscus tea, drunk hot in winter and iced in summer, deep red and sharp.
The drink to have instead of another soft drink. Iced karkadé on a hot afternoon is the single most Egyptian refreshment there is.
fe-SEEKH
Grey mullet salted and fermented for weeks, eaten traditionally at Sham El Nessim in spring.
Included for completeness rather than as a recommendation. Improperly prepared feseekh causes serious illness in Egypt every year, and there is no way for a visitor to judge which is which. Enjoy the festival; skip the fish.
Bread, tahina, salads and pickles land on the table before you have chosen anything. In a normal local restaurant these are part of the meal and included. In a tourist-facing place they occasionally are not — a quick glance at the menu settles it.
You choose the fish from ice, it is weighed in front of you, and the price is agreed then. This is the standard transaction, and it is entirely normal to ask for a smaller one or a different fish.
Egyptians eat late — nine or ten in the evening is ordinary, and a good local restaurant at seven may be empty. If you want the room full, go later than feels natural.
Many local places close through daylight and reopen spectacularly after sunset. Hotel and tourist restaurants run normally. Iftar, the meal that breaks the fast, is the best time of year to eat out here if you can get a table.
Hotel buffets on this coast are built for the median European palate and are much the same everywhere. Nothing about them tells you anything about Egyptian food. One meal outside is enough to notice the gap.
Around 10% where service is not on the bill. Check, because it often is — and cash on the table reaches the staff more reliably than a service charge does.
Tipping, and what a restaurant bill includes →
Neither of the usual answers is useful. “Never eat street food” is wrong and costs people the best meals of their trip; “you’ll be fine” is wrong the other way. This is what people who live here actually do.
Tap water on the coast is desalinated and chlorinated and is not what makes people ill, but it is heavily mineralised and unfamiliar. Bottled is the norm for residents too. Check the cap seal is intact.
Made from filtered water in anywhere that serves visitors. From a street cart on a hot day, less certain, and it is the one street item worth declining.
A koshari shop serving a constant queue is safer than a quiet hotel buffet tray that has been under a lamp since noon. Busy, hot, and cooked in front of you is the rule that matters.
Not because they are dirty, but because they are washed in water and not cooked afterwards. In hotels and good restaurants this is routine and fine; at the margins it is where people come unstuck.
A lot of what visitors call food poisoning is simply a change of water, diet, heat and alcohol arriving at once. It usually passes. What does not pass in a day or two, or comes with a fever, is a pharmacy visit — and pharmacies here are excellent, open late, and used as a first stop rather than a last.
Feseekh, the fermented fish eaten at Sham El Nessim, causes genuine and occasionally fatal poisoning every spring when badly prepared. It is the one food on this coast worth simply not eating.
Restaurants and cafés in the directory, listed by the desk in alphabetical order. Nobody pays to be here, and a listing is a record that a place exists rather than a recommendation.
Last reviewed 25 July 2026. Something out of date? Tell us