Hurghada - Eating out in Egyptian Style

Sheraton Street at Night (Hurghada)

In my absence a new place called Bus Stop has opened up in Sahl Hasheesh. It’s actually a fairly famous chain in Egypt which is part restaurant, part bar, part night club, and part games area (pool table). It has live music maybe on Thursday to Saturday, and two-for-one cocktails in the early evening.

I’ve been twice already since I’ve been back, although not to the live music sessions (yet). Their signature dish is steak, which I had on my second visit. Although it was expensive for Egypt (or so I thought; I’ve since been told that some places in Hurghada charge the same now – inflation is high over here, so it’s hard to keep tags of what’s a reasonable price), it was also one of the best steaks I’ve had. The meat was extremely tender and the pepper sauce was also just right. On my first visit, I had an Indian curry dish of some kind, which was also good, but not nearly as good as the steak. I heard today that their beef burgers are also chunky with a good helping of fries, so it’s all very promising.

Another new place (for me) that I’ve tried since I’ve been back is an Egyptian restaurant in Hurghada called El Dar Darak. It had come recommended by a lot of people on a Hurghada facebook group and my curiosity was aroused.

It took a while for our taxi driver to find it – they don’t usually eat out, and consequently don’t really know the restaurants, so you have to know where you are going in order to explain it to the taxi driver (in our case, by saying it was behind the shop T Data, which we didn’t actually know ourselves!).

We were advised to arrive early (5.30pm) in order to get a table because it’s so popular; it gets full very quickly. Apparently, it used to look a bit like a canteen, but they’ve since done it up a bit, so it is actually fairly presentable (but not grand). It became busy soon after and they also seemed to have a stream of people coming in to ask for a take-away.

The duck came recommended, but I ordered the lamb chops, which you had to order in terms of how many kg (or parts thereof) that you wanted. I went for 250g, on the assumption that this was what a large steak would be. There was the national dish of pigeon on the menu, which I was quite tempted to try, but thought I’d leave that for another time. The duck came literally as a half duck (in a single piece).

Behind us there was a table of about 10 Egyptian men and they seemed to be ordering food like there was no tomorrow. The waiters brought out a huge plate absolutely stacked high with cooked pigeons and then several other plates piled up with meat. It looked as if the pigeon was only a starter (it was relatively inexpensive at 50LE, so that’s just under 2.50 GBP at current exchange rates).

One person with us ordered “mashi” which turned out to be stuffed vegetables. I would order that as a side dish if I went again, as it was delicious. But you’d need to share it, because the portion was huge.

It’s always good to find new places. The Yemini restaurant I went to before has now closed, but other than that I’ve eaten out at some of my old favorites (the Heaven in the marina, and Il Gusto in Sahl Hasheesh). I hope I’ll have some more culinary adventures before the year is out!