A group of Chinese restaurants in Cairo’s Abbassia district offers visitors an experience that goes beyond menus, bringing Chinese recipes and hospitality customs to the area, while the stories of their owners reveal paths that, for some, began with studying at Al-Azhar before becoming business ventures and settled family lives in Egypt.
Abbassia and the route taken by Chinese restaurants into the district
Abbassia’s proximity to Islamic Missions City, which receives foreign students studying at Al-Azhar, helped bring a number of Chinese people to the area, where they settled and worked. Over time, the restaurants they established became part of the district’s streets, offering dishes, drinks and social traditions brought by their owners from China.
The historical roots of the area now occupied by Abbassia go back to what was known as the Desert of al-Raydaniyah, where the Battle of al-Raydaniyah took place in 1517 and ended with the Mamluks’ defeat by the Ottomans. Centuries later, urban development began to spread there during the reign of Abbas I, and military barracks and new buildings were constructed before the area took his name.
Daoud Ismail turns Al-Azhar studies into a restaurant
Among the Chinese restaurant owners in the district is Daoud Ismail, who came to Egypt to study Arabic at Al-Azhar and lived in nearby Islamic Missions City. During his stay, he began thinking about establishing a Chinese restaurant, drawing on experience gained by watching his parents run a restaurant in eastern China.
Daoud opened his restaurant in Cairo 13 years ago and later completed his studies at Al-Azhar, but the expansion of his business and the formation of his family made leaving Egypt difficult for him. He says he graduated from Al-Azhar a long time ago, but his life became tied to Egypt as his business grew and his restaurant became, in his words, one of the country’s leading Chinese restaurants, attracting customers of many nationalities.
For Daoud, the business is no longer merely a place of work. He married a relative who came from China to live with him in Egypt, and they had four daughters who study at Egyptian schools. He says members of his family visit them every winter, while his own family travels to China at widely spaced intervals.
Daoud tries to bring details of his culture into the restaurant. He has put Chinese welcome messages on the walls and serves customers a drink called “shahi” in earthenware vessels brought from China. He explains that the drink is not the green tea usually served in other Chinese restaurants, but a blend of tea seeds, pumpkin, dates and spices brought from his country.
Daoud describes Chinese cuisine as rich in food and drink recipes, explaining that every region of China has its own distinctive dishes. He says his restaurant tries to serve dishes from different Chinese cuisines, but focuses mainly on food from eastern China, where he learned to cook from his family. One question Daoud frequently receives from some customers is whether his restaurant serves sushi.
He responds by explaining that sushi is a Japanese dish, not a Chinese one, and stresses that the restaurant serves Chinese food. To him, the question reflects a common confusion between dishes from different Asian cuisines. The restaurant consists of a main dining hall and rooms for large groups. In one room, Daoud has placed a round table with a revolving marble top, similar to tables used in China, including in homes.
He explains that this type of table encourages diners to share food. Several dishes are placed on it, and each person takes what they want before the tabletop is turned so the dishes can reach the other diners. The same room also contains a device for heating water and preparing “shahi” throughout the meal.
Daoud says one member of staff prepares the drink and serves it to guests in the rooms for large groups throughout their stay, as part of the hospitality style the restaurant seeks to preserve. Menus at a number of Chinese restaurants across Abbassia are similar, including noodle dishes served with different sauces, food with “sweet and sour” sauce, and stuffed pastries resembling samosas.
Hussein’s restaurant faces Cairo’s language barrier
Despite this similarity, each restaurant has a different story linked to its owners and the circumstances in which they arrived in Cairo. Two streets away from Anda Chinese is a restaurant with the direct name “The Chinese Restaurant”. The word “halal” appears beside the name in Arabic, indicating the nature of the food served there.
The restaurant is run by Hussein and his wife, neither of whom speaks Arabic or English, so communication with them takes place through a translation programme. Hussein arrived in Cairo three months ago and bought the restaurant from its previous owner, who returned to China after living in Egypt for more than ten years. Hussein says Egyptians make up the majority of his customers and that the language difference has not stopped them visiting the restaurant and eating its meals.
An Egyptian employee who knows some Chinese words helps Hussein and his wife receive customers and communicate with them. The couple serve guests green tea and dumplings, pieces of dough filled with minced meat and served boiled, continuing the hospitality traditions and dishes they brought from China.
Hussein says he has grown very fond of Egypt and hopes to live there for a long time. Although he acknowledges that business sometimes goes through difficult periods, he insists that these difficulties will not make him leave the country. Unlike some Chinese residents of Abbassia, Hussein and his wife did not come to Egypt to study at Al-Azhar. When prayer time arrives, Hussein makes a point of leaving the restaurant and going to a nearby mosque.
Islam and hospitality reshape the restaurants’ identity
He describes himself as a Chinese Muslim, saying that he and his wife make sure to pray on time. This also explains the prominent display of the word “halal” on the restaurant’s frontage and the explanation given to customers about the nature of its food. At another Chinese restaurant in the district, seemingly disparate elements come together: Chinese people work there, a picture of Sheikh Mohammed Metwally Al-Shaarawi occupies a prominent place on one of its walls, and the venue is called “Al-Amrikani”.
Ibrahim, a young Chinese man, has worked at this restaurant for about five years. He says staff ask customers to put away their phones while eating, in order to help them enjoy the meal and talk to one another instead of being distracted by photographing the dishes. However, the restaurant does not require customers to comply if they object.
As for the picture of Al-Shaarawi, Ibrahim explains that his family learned about Islam through him, and through him learned about Egypt and Al-Azhar. He also faces repeated questions about why a Chinese restaurant still bears the name “Al-Amrikani”. He explains that the name was already in place when the premises were bought, when it served American fast food. The new owners chose to keep it while changing the type of food served by the restaurant to Chinese dishes.
