I would like to start off by saying that it gives me no pleasure to talk about bad food at restaurants. I do feel, however, that it’s important so speak truthfully about the experiences I had in Egypt, both good and bad. Unfortunately, the restaurant food I had in Luxor was, for the most part, pretty lousy.
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I didn’t spend as much time in Luxor as I did in Cairo, but I enjoyed it a lot more. There are just as many people trying to make a living off of tourists, but they have a much better sense of humor about it. One thing Luxor did have in common with Cairo was that the street food was much better than the restaurant food.
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As I mentioned in my previous post, I enjoyed the street food of Cairo (and of Egypt in general) much more than the restaurant food. I want to point out that this was my personal experience; I’m sure Cairo has some very good restaurants, I just didn’t eat at any of them. My guidebooks said that there are some very good high end restaurants, but that’s not the kind of place I usually eat at when I travel. The restaurant I was most looking forward to was Koshary Abou Tarek, the most famous koshary in all of Cairo, and by extension, the world. Even Anthony Bourdain ate there when he went to Egypt.
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When I think about Cairo, the first thing I think about is the traffic. For any given two-lane road there’s at least three lanes of cars, usually bumper to bumper. Crossing the street is both a science and an art. One Cairene told me that the real Egyptian way to do it is to just close your eyes and go, but there’s more to it than that. You can watch and wait, and your brain can do the calculations to let you know if there’s just enough space between two cars, and if they’re moving just slow enough. Then again, sometimes there is no good time to go and you just have to step out into the street — the closed-eye method. There’s also the sense that the roads, as well as the ramps and the sidewalks (or lack thereof) are more complicated than they need to be. Perhaps this is a consequence of being such an old city (modern Cairo goes back about 1000 years); roads and paths were hallowed by time long before cars, and the infrastructure just went up where people expected them to be. The good news is that as long as there have been roads, there have been people who sell food to those traveling upon those roads. And in fact, the street food in Cairo is better and cheaper than any of the restaurant food I had while I was there.
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Dim sum restaurants in LA come and go all the time. What was once a hit spot for great food could become a sushi restaurant or in most cases another dim sum restaurant but with a different name. They always brag about spending loads of money to hire the best chefs in Hong Kong to make great dim sum. Eventually the chef moves on, quite possibly to another restaurant that offered him more money, and the cycle continues.
I’m not sure how old or new Lunasia is. I found this place out while ready Eating LA, hmm foie gras dumplings eh? Everytime I come home I have to have some dim sum. So I dragged my family out to see what Lunasia was all about. The first thing about dim sum is that either you get there super early or prepare to wait for hours. Dim sum is not fast food. People tend to linger at their table drinking tea. We made the mistake of getting there close to noon and we waited for an hour to squeeze into a table for 4 with the 5 of us.
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As I mentioned in my previous Baltimore Eats post, the weekend that I was in Baltimore was the same weekend as the Fells Point Fun Festival. While looking for breakfast I happened to have found it but it was too early. The vendors were just setting up but I did see giant chunks of meat getting ready to be BBQ’d. After getting breakfast and trying out my first ever scrapple I walked back to the hotel and was stuck watching Sky High on HBO. Yeah I just couldn’t get myself to stop watching it and actually be out doing something. What finally did get me out of the hotel was hunger. Again I had no idea what to eat for lunch but I knew where to go back to Fells Point to check out the festival.
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