|
|
register now
for site updates
(type your email here)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Al-Zaieem answers all your questions about Egypt. Ask him your question here
Zaieem.
I am moving to Cairo from NYC. My question is: What is the club scene like in Cairo? I love hip hop and reggae. Any suggestions?
Layla
Hate to say it, Layla, but your options aren't that encouraging. Al-Zaieem referred your question to a friend and noted Party Girl. Asked where someone in Cairo should go to find good hip-hop, she replied, "The best thing to do is buy a ticket to New York."
Cairo does have a few dance floors sprinkled about, but unfortunately many of them boast the kind of music mix that you might hear at an American wedding -- lots of Ricky Martin and that inevitable teeth-grinding medley from the movie 'Grease.'
There is the occasional hip hop club out there. A club called Exit, located in the Atlas hotel just off of Attaba Square, was once a pretty cool place to hear hip-hop, but the scene might have moved on by now. The Marines at the US Embassy throw parties with the music you're looking for about once a month. A club called Indigo (8 Abdel Rahman El-Rafei St, Mohandessin, Tel:
760-0513, www.indigocairo.com) doesn't really have a proper dance floor, but the music is good. Another club called Africana on Pyramids road has a fairly dodgy reputation, but it remains an anchor of the local hip hop scene. And finally, a club in Heliopolis's Merryland gardens called Da Karma has more of a techno reputation, but check them out anyway -- Tel: 451-2313—7.
Now, let's once again call on the vast legions of Al-Zaieem's loyal followers to help out a fellow subject in need. Anybody out there with recommendations on where to hear good hip-hop or reggae in Cairo, please write in—and be sure to include the address and phone number of the club. As always, any responses that meet the strict Al-Zaieem standards for wisdom
will be posted.
What kind of food do they eat in Egypt?
The basic staple of the Egyptian diet is fuul -- cooked fava beans. It's vaguely similar to Latin American refried pinto beans and is eaten in sandwiches, or scooped out of a bowl with pieces of pita bread. Fuul has about a dozen different variations, and can be served with different kinds
of oils, with salad, mixed with tomato sauce, yogurt or eggs.
Another basic element of Egyptian home food is almost any kind of vegetable cooked in a tomato base with chunks of meat and served over rice. This can be done with peas, string beans, spinach, zucchini, black-eyed peas and almost anything else you can think of. It's so common, in fact, that it doesn't even really have a name -- instead taking its name from whatever vegetable it uses.
One other truly Egyptian masterpiece is known as koshari -- a starch-intensive dish which combines rise, pasta and brown lentils topped with fried onions and tomato sauce. Cairo features thousands of koshari restaurants which can be easily spotted by the enormous metal tubs of rice and pasta in the windows. A huge heaping plate of koshari at one of these places costs about 30 American cents.
Egyptians, and Arabs in general, are also crazy for sweets—most of them involving some kind of layered or shredded dough, mixed with nuts or raisins and soaked in a high-octane sugar syrup.
Did you like this article? Send your comments to comments@cairolive.com
|
|
|
|
