Sudanese businesswoman Julie Samir’s dream of opening a restaurant has lastly come true, but it surely’s a bittersweet achievement after she fled to Egypt from her war-torn homeland of Sudan.
Now, Samir has one purpose for his menu: to beat the palates of Egyptians with the style of Sudan’s complicated culinary traditions, born of a wealthy historical past on the crossroads of the Center East and Africa.
“I’m focusing on the Egyptian shopper, I would like them to know the Sudanese tradition,” mentioned the 42-year-old. AFP from his sunlit restaurant in japanese Cairo, the aroma of simmering aromatics wafting from the kitchen.
All through the sprawling megalopolis of Cairo, residence to greater than 20 million folks, many Sudanese refugees have opened companies, bringing a style of residence and hoping to make a reputation for themselves.
Ms Samir and her two youngsters have been within the Egyptian capital for greater than a 12 months, since making the two,000 kilometer (about 1,200 mile) journey from their residence in Khartoum.
Together with half 1,000,000 different Sudanese, they fled the conflict between Sudan’s common military and the paramilitary Speedy Help Forces to neighboring Egypt, and set to work rebuilding a life.
At present, on the garden of one in all Cairo’s luxurious sports activities golf equipment, Ms. Samir’s restaurant, ‘Kush Kids’s Village’, serves a fusion menu.
“The identify was my father’s thought, impressed by the Bible,” he mentioned, explaining the reference to Kush, the traditional kingdom that encompassed what’s now Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia.
powerful competitors
“We serve all three cuisines,” he mentioned proudly, however insisted that the restaurant stays distinctly Sudanese.
“Everybody who works right here is from Sudan, all of us got here right here fleeing the conflict,” he mentioned, explaining how the staff discovered one another by means of solidarity networks on social media.
Within the kitchen, chef Fadi Moufid, 46, tended to the pots and pans and cooked a wide range of the restaurant’s dishes.
The previous caterer’s signature is agashe: skewers of meat, hen or fish seasoned with a spicy dry peanut dressing after which roasted low and gradual over glowing coals.
“Egyptians don’t love meals as spicy as we do, so we attempt to tone it down to allow them to actually admire it,” Moufid mentioned. AFP on a plate of zigni, a beef stew marinated in Ethiopian spices and served with injera, a fluffy flatbread.
However breaking into the Egyptian culinary scene is not any simple activity.
“Competitors wasn’t that massive in Sudan amongst meals corporations, but it surely’s big right here,” Moufid says, pointing notably to the “massive Syrian eating places” based by diaspora entrepreneurs who additionally fled their war-torn nation within the Nineties. final years.
Standing out may be tough, however Moufid and Samir are slowly attracting Egyptian palates.
“I appreciated the style of the spices and the way tender the meat is,” mentioned one in all their Egyptian visitors, Khaled Abdelrahman. AFP.
“It has a unique really feel,” he mentioned.
Within the western Cairo suburb of Sheikh Zayed, Sudanese pastry chef Qussay Biram’s dessert store, “Jeeb Maak,” which in Arabic means “deliver,” sells fried dumplings known as “luqaimat.”
They’re just like Egyptian ‘zalabia’, however nonetheless shock Egyptians who enter this sweet-smelling store.
‘Eager for Sudan’
“They’re shocked as a result of we put extra salt within the dough than they’re used to,” mentioned one in all their workers, Ziad Abdelhalim. AFP.
“It offers a unique style of sweetness,” he mentioned as he served prospects a steaming cup of conventional milk tea flavored with cardamom, additionally new to most Egyptians.
The enterprise mannequin is clearly working, and ‘Jeeb Maak’ now has three branches throughout Cairo.
However Biram says it hardly makes up for what he left behind.
At 29 years previous, the businessman believes that he’ll most likely by no means return to Sudan and that the companies he “closed as a result of conflict” in his nation are gone endlessly.
In simply over a 12 months, already impoverished Sudan has been devastated. The conflict has killed tens of 1000’s of individuals, pressured practically 9 million from their properties and introduced the nation to the brink of famine.
“Even when issues settle down, there will not be many enterprise alternatives,” he mentioned, decided in his plan to “carry this expertise ahead in Egypt.”
Samir, who mentioned his household was harassed by paramilitary fighters when fleeing Sudan, had deliberate to spend solely a month in Egypt.
“However the conflict will not be over,” she mentioned, resigned to discovering methods to recollect the homeland she longs for.
“I need to rent a henna artist for the restaurant, I do know Egyptians like it,” he mentioned, laughing.
