Zööba doesn’t particularly need additional advertising: the place is always packed, you can see their delivery mopeds everywhere, and it boasts six locations throughout Greater Cairo. Still, it’s the restaurant we keep going back to (and ordering in from) again and again, so it deserves to be celebrated a little here.

We love Zööba because they serve dishes rooted in traditional Egyptian street food and made with fresh ingredients, but modernized with a little bit of zing. People come here for their takes on local classic dishes such as pickles, salad, koshari (Egypt’s national dish of pasta, rice, lentils, chickpeas, tomato sauce, and fried onions), the fuhl (warm bean stew served with bread), and tameya (Cairene word for falafel). Everything is delicious.

G. usually gets a tameya sandwich, served in baladi (local) flatbreads and offered in different flavours such as spicy pepper, eggplant, or pickled lemon. I can’t get enough of their chicken shawarma plate, which is served on perfumed rice with fresh argula, pickled beetroot, lightly pickled cucumbers, lots of veggies, and tahina sauce.

The Zamalek location is stylish but small—you sit down at a shared zinc table in the middle of the restaurant and try not to elbow the other diners in the face. I love the counter at the front, which is where the koshari gets made: a giant beaten metal bowl of carbs, smaller pots over bricks and flames to keep the spicy tomato sauce nice and hot.

If you want to try out delicious, quality Egyptian street food without any risk of indigestion, this is definitely the place to go.