Sheikh Ali

For conservative Egyptians, this bar, located on a side-road off Saad Zaghloul Street in Alexandria, adds a certain insult to injury with its unorthodox appelation. Seldom has an establishment selling alcohol in the Middle East found itself with a name better suited to a mosque, a holy shrine, or a person of religious piety. But then again, Alexandrians have always had the reputation of being a little more open-minded about things.

This famous watering hole, which opened circa 1900, was called Cap D’Or (not to be confused with its notorious imposter on Abdel Khalik Tharwat Street in downtown Cairo). Two Greeks and a Frenchman were the proprietors of the bar - one of a cluster of venues in the neighbourhood catering to the city’s cosmopolitan socialites. Egyptian aristocrats, politicos, foreign expatriates, businesspeople, and artists all flocked there to eat, drink and make merry.

When the 1952 socialist revolution took place, the foreign owners of the bar, like many others, decided to pack up and leave the country. Before departing, they sold Cap D’or to a local man named “Ali”.

But unlike subsequent owners of the bar, Ali decided to close on Fridays (the Muslim sabbath). So when clients came to the bar that day, only to find its doors shut, they began to refer to him as “al Sheikh Ali” - the "sheikh" being an honorific designating piety, respectability and knowledge, especially of a religious type. And like all nicknames of genius, it stuck like glue.

Ali’s son now runs the joint. It retains its art nouveau décor and is one of the most popular old-school drinking shacks in the country. The bar has its own regulars and has a bit of a cliquey, clubhouse feel to it. Henry Kissinger is said to have made a stop here in the 1970s, between his diplomatic hobnobbing, to have a cold Stella.

Restaurant Varouj

The most interesting Middle East Institutions are often those that fly far below the radar of the masses. A purely word-of-mouth establishment, Restaurant Varouj is one such place.

This Lebanese cookery, located in the tiny labyrinthine streets of Beirut’s Armenian enclave of Burj Hammoud, requires of its customers not just a monster appetite, but also a serious wherewithal for exploration.

There are no maps, street names or workable directions to find the place – just a general location from which to enter that Borgesian maze of laundry-draped alleyways that make up the Middle East’s most densely populated neighbourhood. Only by asking directions from a series of bleary-eyed elders and teenagers playing soccer in flip-flops will one find their way, point-by-point, to Varouj’s doorstep.

Here a father-and-son team presides over all four tables situated beneath shelves decked with Middle Eastern bric-a-brac. The mercurial, cigar-smoking elder, playing the combined role of owner, waiter, and maitre d’ is a character of the old school variety, who’s known to verbally manhandle his customers in the slightly tarnished Arabic of the Burj Hammoudi Armenians. His mild-mannered son whips up culinary storms at his command from a cooking station just a few feet behind him.

The usual Lebanese fare is on offer here – and all of it is extremely good. The prize dishes are the sujouk (spicy Armenian sausages), chicken livers, makanek (Lebanese sausages), b’tata harra (spicy homefries), and the raw kibbeh. To wash the whole thing down, order a bottle of locally made Arak (diluted with water in a pitcher and served in small glasses with ice cubes).

The novelty of the Varouj experience is amplified by the absence of printed menus or listed prices of any kind. Food is ordered ad hoc depending on what the master of ceremonies has available that day - and what he thinks you should eat!

At the end of the smorgasbord the host haphazardly tallies the meal price in an indecipherable chicken-scratch and throws it on the table. But it’s invariably less costly than what you'd expect to pay for such a meal fit for a king.

We’d add a few lines about how to find the place, but getting there through one’s own efforts is half the reward.

Middle East Institutions - Charcuterie

Charcuterie (Rabbi Hanina St., 3, Jaffa) is a Middle East Institution in the making. If it lasts long enough and maintains its excellent fare, it will be a place to resort to without fail.

Situated in the pedestrian streets around the old Jaffa Souk and flea market, it is a resto-bar that is highly conducive to conversation and late night cavorting. It has all the marks of a good "hang-out": with a full and relaxed atmosphere and enough surrounding competition to keep its standards up.

The food is superb, marked by choucroute and the chef's sausages of all varieties. The owners and staff are part of the crowd that spills into the street on summer nights.

The restaurant is marked by a memorable stained glass image of the city where it is located.

Torino Express

Most aptly described as a pint-sized hole-in-the wall, this café-cum-bar located in Beirut’s boisterous Gemayze district, is one of Lebanon’s epicenters of social ferment. Throngs of diehard regulars made up of local and expatriate artists, journalists, and creative young professionals descend in waves upon this cellar-like intrusion to revel the night away to the strangely eclectic musical selections of DJ-proprietor "Andreas" – Torino’s celebrity half-German, half-Lebanese owner known for his bushy salt-and-pepper beard, scotch-taped headphones and glassy-eyed disposition. He is both loved and held in contempt for sending his parties into convulsions by throwing sudden wrenches into the musical fray – German beer garden music, classic Julio Iglesias, and Mirielle Mathieu being some notable selections. Lab-coat clad bartenders serve up bottles of Almaza, trademark mojitos, and some of the best toasted salami sandwiches found anywhere east of the now vanished Green Line. Often packed like a sardine can, this bar is not for the claustrophobic or faint of heart.

All text and photo in this post copyright John Zada and John Bell 2009

Munzer's Book Shop

For most international visitors to East Jerusalem, Munzer's Book Shop at the American Colony Hotel is an oasis away from the frenetic activity, gossip and wheeling-and-dealing of Middle East politics. This narrow shop, tucked away in a classic Jerusalem style room of rough hewn stone with a domed roof, is a place where people come to browse books specialized in Middle East history, literature and politics. People also come to chat with Munzer Fahmy, the owner of this institution. Talks with him can range rapidly over current politics, visitors to the hotel, and the books themselves.

Munzer, a Jerusalemite from the Old City, and partly of Egyptian stock, got the idea to open up the bookstore through a circuitous road. After learning about the book business in the Netherlands, Munzer attended a book fair in Tel Aviv where he realized that people were disappointed by the predictable and shallow selection being presented. He decided to put on his first book fair at the Zionist Organization of America in Tel Aviv.

Success spurred him to try his luck in his home town, and so he moved his enterpreneurship to the Hyatt Regency in Jerusalem. Someone there suggested to him that his next book fair should be at the elegant Pasha Room of the American Colony Hotel - the nexus of hobnobbing for journalist and diplomats. And so he did. And at that event, another individual in the relay proposed that he open up a shop in the American Colony - another idea which he successfully acted on. And so it was.
The shop has been open since 1998 and beyond the Middle Eastern materials on sale, one can find everything from the latest South African literature to the poetic verses of an Afghan Sufi. The book store is the perfect addendum to the hotel: a conversation there about Jerusalem can lead to the purchase of a book on the city.

The shop's success and popularity goes on, and after much seeking, Munzer  continues to enjoy meeting and speaking with all comers to his shop.

Al-Fishawy's Cafe

All text and photos in this post copyright John Zada and John Bell 2008

Barring times of war, domestic turmoil, and national emergency, al-Fishawy cafe - located in the Khan al-Khalili district of Islamic Cairo - has been serving customers non-stop for over two hundred years.

This 24-hour 7 day-a-week establishment, located in a narrow alleyway just off of Midan Hussein, began as an informal meeting place with coffee after evening prayer. The meetings were hosted by a man whose name we know only to be al-Fishawy. As time went on the gatherings grew, tea and sheesha tobacco were added to the menu, and the clientele ballooned. Today al-Fishawy's is run by the descendants of the cafe's originator and has become one of the most famous coffee-shops and social gathering places in the Middle East.

The old adage of location being the primary factor in a business's success was likely coined in relation to this coffee-house. The establishment owes its immense popularity to being at the epicentre of old Cairo life - lying on the cusp of the overlapping meeting places of the Khan al-Khalili bazaar, the 1000 year-old al-Azhar University (the world's oldest university), and the Sayyidna al-Husayn ibn Ali Mosque, where the head of one of the Prophet Mohammed's grandsons is said to rest.

With its tucked-away location, partial open-air view, and antique disposition, al-Fishawy has long been a magnet for intellectuals, musicians, artists, and writers. Today, local and out-of-town Egyptians mingle with foriegn tourists and expats beneath the old oil paintings and enormous mirrors with guilded Arabesque frames. A steady stream of stray cats, child urchins and trinket salesmen move through the alleyway seeking to capitalize on the daily gatherings of humanity.

In addition to the staple coffees and mint tea, the cafe serves kirkaday (a deep-red hisbiscus tea said to have curative properties), fresh lemonade, and sahlab (a hot milky drink consumed in winter and topped with nuts and raisins).

The Shepheard's Hotel

All text in this post copyright John Zada and John Bell 2008
Photo Courtesy of Studio Kerop, Cairo

In order to accommodate the influx of tourists coming to Egypt in the mid-19th century, including those passing through Cairo en route to India, some of the first large-scale hotels were built in the Egyptian capital at that time. In 1841, Samuel Shepheard became the co-manager of The British Hotel in Cairo, one of the first of those lodgings to be built. Four years later Shepheard bought The British Hotel and changed its name to Shepheard's. Located in the heart of the downtown quarter within close proximity to Cairo's best amenities and historical sites, the hotel gained a favourable reputation for good service and access to adventure that spread far and wide.

Referred to as “the caravanserai through which the world flows”, the Shepheard's became, at least for a time, one of the most luxurious and opulent hotels in the world. As the years passed however, and as the hotel moved into different buildings to accommodate the growing tourist flood, the Shepheard's would become an overcrowded terminus for colonialists, some of whom traveled to Egypt merely to imbibe the hotel's legendary atmosphere. In addition to being an expatriate hub and meeting place for the well-heeled, the hotel also served as the base for the King Tut excavations in Luxor, and for the British Army during World War One.

The Shepheard's longstanding associations with Britain's imperialist-colonialist agenda led to its eventual downfall. The hotel was burnt down by an angry mob during city-wide nationalist riots in January 1952. It's modern namesake, an imitation façade that stands today on Corniche al-Nil, miles from the original Ezbekiya location, was built soon after the fire, but retains little to nothing of the old hotel, save the name.

Middle East Institutions - Restaurant Mounir

Camille Chamoun Blvd, New Roumieh Road,

Broummana, Tel.: (04) 873900

http://www.mounirs.com

Middle East Institutions - Abou Shakra

69 Kasr el-Einy Street
Garden City, Cairo
Tel. 531 6111

A Cairo landmark, this fancy kebab house has been serving locals for over 50 years. There are other branches in Heliopolis and Mohandiseen. Recently refurbished and purged of its Disney idols and other kitsch collectibles, this conservative Muslim restaurant is done up in marble and alabaster. Seating is a little tight and the staff can be slow, but customers are always guaranteed an authentic Egyptian experience.

The main speciality here is kebabs, with prices calculated per kilo of meat and a host of salads and dips to choose from. Pigeon, chicken and specialty beef dishes are also on the menu. The Egyptian desserts served here are heavenly, with top honours going to the Om Ali (flakey dough with raisins and nuts soaked in sugar and milk).

Middle East Institutions - The Acropole Hotel

Zubeir Pacha Street, Khartoum, Sudan

Tel. +249 1 8377 2860

Fax. +249 1 8377 0898

Middle East Institutions - Nanuchka

Middle East Institutions - Le Chef

Gouraud Street, Gemayze, Beirut, 961 1 446769 - 961 1 445373