CAIRO SEAFOOD SAGA: the ₤80 Feast That Made Me Cry Tears of Joy
📍Venue: Ibn Hamid, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it local legend somewhere between Downtown and the Nile corniche. No neon signs, just the perfume of garlic and cumin drifting onto the sidewalk like a culinary Bat-Signal. 🦸♂️🧄 🛬 Backstory I had just landed from the States—jet-lagged, emotionally jet-wrecked, and convinced my taste buds had died somewhere over the Atlantic. Friends back home warned, “Egyptian food is… okay.” Okay? OKAY?! Ibn Hamid just body-slammed that narrative into the Red Sea. 🤼♂️🌊 🧾 The Receipt That Broke the Internet Total damage: ₤80 for two humans (that’s roughly $2.60 USD per dish—my Uber to the airport cost more). The waiter scribbled one glorious lump-sum at the bottom, so the exact per-item math is forever lost to the sands of time, but who’s counting when your soul is ascending? 🧮❤️🔥 🥣 Star of the Show: Seafood Soup (p2) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ They call it “soup,” but it’s really Poseidon’s bathtub. Every ladle delivers clams that still taste like high tide, shrimp doing backstrokes in saffron broth, and mysterious white-fleshed fish that flakes into edible silk. I ordered a second bowl before I’d finished the first—partly gluttony, partly fear I’d dreamed the whole thing. 😭🐚 🧈 Yellow-Butter Butterfly Shrimp (p1 bottom-left) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ “Butterfly” isn’t just cute plating; it’s an Egyptian technique where each shrimp is split, pounded, then baptized in clarified butter and a secret cheese blend (think aged gouda meets salty kashkaval). The crust turns amber and crackly while the inside stays ocean-fresh. I caught myself licking my fingers in public—zero regrets. 🤌🔥 🥘 Tagine Seafood Rice (p1 top-right) ⭐⭐⭐ Arrives in a conical clay pot still bubbling like a wizard’s cauldron. The tagine steams basmati grains until they’re drunk on seafood stock, then blankets them in stretchy, gruyère-adjacent cheese. Every forkful tastes different: first smoky paprika, then sweet fennel, then a whisper of cinnamon that pirouettes on your tongue. It’s risotto’s exotic cousin who studied abroad in Alexandria. 🏺🍚 🍋 Lemon Juice Side-Quest ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Simple name, legendary execution. Fresh Sicilian lemons squeezed to order, then lightly sweetened so the citrus sings instead of stings. We diluted it tableside with icy water and turned it into an all-you-can-drink fountain of life. Paired with shellfish, it’s like giving your palate a spa day. 🧖♂️🍹 🎊 Bonus Heart-Warming DLC The dining room is a mosaic of multigenerational Egyptian families—grandmas doling out rice, toddlers drumming on crab shells. Mid-meal, two little girls in sparkly hijabs marched up, said “Hello, we love China!” and asked for selfies. Their English was Disney-level fluent; my Arabic is still stuck on “shukran,” but somehow we compared favorite TikTok dances between bites. Cultural barrier? Never heard of her. 💃📸 🛍️ Pro-Human Tips Arrive hungry—portions are pharaoh-sized. Cash only—cards are as useless as a snorkel in the Sahara. Go at sunset—golden hour plus garlic butter equals Instagram gold. 🌅📷 Ask for extra soup spoons—you’ll need them for communal slurping. 🗣️ TL;DR for the group chat Ibn Hamid = seafood Valhalla on a backpacker budget. If someone tells you “Egypt doesn’t have flavor,” smile politely and yeet them this review. Then order another bowl of that soup and bask in the smug glow of being right. 🏆🇪🇬 See you at the bottom of the broth bowl—bring a snorkel. 🤿 #Egypt #Europe #Cairo #Food
