Cairo: Sudanese entrepreneur Julie Samir’s dream of opening a restaurant has come true, but after fleeing her Sudanese homeland in Egypt, it is a remarkable achievement.
Now, Samir has one goal for his menu: to outdo Egypt by savoring the complex culinary traditions of Sudan, born from a rich history at the crossroads of the Middle East and Africa.
“I’m targeting Egyptian consumers, I want them to know Sudanese culture,” the 42-year-old told the AFP news agency, the smell wafting from the kitchen in the restaurant’s sunshine in eastern Cairo.
In the megalopolis of Cairo – home to more than 20 million people – many refugees have opened homes and businesses with the hope of becoming famous.
Samir and his two children have been in the Egyptian capital for more than a year, after moving 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) from their home in Khartoum.
The Sudanese, along with half a million other Sudanese, fled fighting between Sudan’s regular army and paramilitary ambulances to neighboring Egypt and began to rebuild their lives.
Today, on the lawn of one of Cairo’s top sports clubs, Samir’s ‘Bird Children’s Village’ restaurant offers a joint menu.
“This name, my father’s idea, was inspired by the Bible,” he explained, referring to the ancient Kushan kingdom, which included modern Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
“We serve all three dishes,” he says proudly, but insists the restaurant is still Sudanese.
“Anyone who works here is from Sudan, we all fled the war,” he said, explaining how the group found each other through solidarity social media networks.
In the kitchen, chef Fadi Moufid, 46, fiddles with the pots and pans that cook most of the restaurant’s meals.
A typical meal of the former is meat, chicken, or fish sprinkled with a dry, aromatic bean broth, then slowly roasted over low, glowing coals.
“Egyptians don’t like their food as spicy as we do, so we try to reduce it so they can really appreciate it,” the Egyptian told AFP over a dish of zigini, beef marinated in Ethiopian spices and served with injera. sponge cake
But cracking the Egyptian culinary scene is not an easy task.
“Competition among food businesses is not good in Sudan, but it is very big here,” said Moufid, pointing to the “big Syrian restaurants” created by diaspora entrepreneurs who fled their homeland because of the war in recent years.
Getting out of the abyss may be difficult, but Moufid and Samir are slowly drawing on the Egyptian feet.
“I like the flavor of the spices and the tenderness of the meat,” one of the Egyptian guests, Khalid Abdelrahman, told AFP.
“It has a different flavor,” she says.
In the outskirts of Sheikh Zayed city, west of Cairo, the dessert shop of Qussay Biram, a Sudanese confectioner, sells balls of fried dough called “luqaimat” – “Jeb Maak” – Arabic for “Come”.
It is similar to the Egyptian “zalabia”, but still surprises Egyptians who enter the spice shop.
“It was a surprise because we put more salt in the dough than before,” one of its employees, Ziad Abdelhalim, told AFP.
“It gives a different flavor to the food,” he says as he offers customers steaming cups of the traditional cardamom-flavored milk tea, which is novel to most Egyptians.
The business model is clearly working, and Jeeb Maak now has three branches in Cairo.
But Biram says it’s hard to make up for what’s left behind.
The 29-year-old businessman believes that he will never return to Sudan and that his business, which has been closed “because of the war”, will disappear forever.
In just over a year, poor Sudan has been destroyed. The war left tens of thousands dead, displaced nearly nine million people and left the country on the brink of famine.
“Even if the situation is calm, there won’t be many opportunities for business,” he said.
Samir, who says his family was persecuted by the military when they fled to Sudan, had planned to spend just one month in Egypt.
“But the war is not over yet,” he said, resigning himself to finding ways to remind his beloved country.
“I want to hire a henna artist in a restaurant, I know Egyptians like that,” he said.
