Eating at Al Capone's in the Sinai, on the Red Sea

It may not have been the best food I ever ate, but it certainly was my favorite meal in many years. I had this seafood feast in a small village on the eastern side of the Sinai called Dahab (Arabic for Gold). I was making my around the Sinai with a friend a few years ago. We took a ferry from Aqabah to Nuweiba in Egypt. From there, we negotiated (and renegotiated and renegotiated) with the driver to take us to the quaint diving village of Dhahab. Unfortunately, we shared the taxi ride with three Americans, two who were very obnoxious. Both my friend and I had lived all over the world, and we listened to one guy telling his new friends all about Egyptian culture. My friend and I just looked at each other and bit our lips. It was a long hour drive to Dhahab.
When we finally arrived, the village didn't look very impressive. There were a lot of rundown buildings, and dusty empty lots. We didn't know that the heart of Dhahab was a long,narrow strip right on the Red Sea. Once we moved from the center of the town inward, we understood the popularity of that small and intimate place. We walked on a boardwalk and came to a beautiful arched bridge. From the top of that bridge, we could see the restaurant and dive shop area laid out before us. There were dozens of beautiful restaurants, all built up on pylons extending out over the water. The roofs were thatched, and there was a lot of bamboo. We decided to find a hotel, then to wander down the lane to a good restaurant.
We had a bit of a problem finding a decent hotel. It was almost Christmas, and the town was crowded. We did manage to find one place with a clean room. We walked up from the lobby to an open roof area with brightly colored rooms. The courtyard looked out over the sea, and there was a nice breeze blowing in. It was the start of a very nice evening. After settling in and discovering there were no towels in the hotel, we sought out and found a small store and bought some souvenir Dhahab towels. We took them back to the room and headed out to eat. We had no idea what we were in for.
When we crossed over the bridge, we were bombarded with pitchmen standing outside each restaurant. We had decided to make a thorough reconnoiter to make sure we didn't make a hasty decision. The first place we passed was named Al Capone's Restaurant. They had tables out front of the dining area with fresh seafood on ice. We would be allowed to pick our food. The barker haggled with us and tried to physically pull me in. We gently refused and kept walking. We repeated that scene maybe a dozen times as we walked on. I made the mistake of telling several of them that I would come back. For the next day and a half, as we walked up and down the seafront, I was reminded of my promise by a dozen Egytpian hawkers. I just smiled dopely and moved on. That night, we eventually decided that we liked the first place we saw, even though it was named after an American gangster. When we walked back up to the restaurant, our friend smiled broadly and said "I knew you would come back, welcome, welcome." We then went through the process of selecting our food, and haggling for a price (the picture above is just one of the trays they served us!). We sat at the corner of the restaurant and looked out over a dark sea. It really was a beautiful setting.
When the food showed up, we were astounded. They had taken so much care to construct the foil decorations, and the food looked incredible. We didn't know where to start. We had fish, prawns, and other shellfish. There were ornately cut vegetables and potatoes. For desert, they brought out another elaborate plate with fruit and pancakes. As we ate, we threw scraps to a group of feral cats under our table. It really was beautiful evening.
Of course, the bill we finally received was much more than our original quote. The experience had been so fun, that we really didn't care. That night we took a stroll back down the waterfront (constantly admonished for my earlier promises) and looked at some tourist shops. We stopped by an artists studio and talked to the owner about his art. The weather was perfect, there were brightly colored lanterns hung everywhere, and the whole place had a peaceful ambiance. It was one of the most relaxing evenings I can remember.
The next day, after walking out to the seafront, we ate breakfast at one of the places I had promised to return to, then boarded a bus for a long journey around the Sinai up to Cairo. I think though, that I left a little piece of me at Al Capone's Restaurant.

Kusherie

I didn't come to kusherie the usual way. I am not sure there is a usual way, other than being Egyptian. Nonetheless, after a year of build up, and a false start, I finally had my first taste of kusherie, appropriately served in a plastic bucket. It quickly became my favorite thing about Egypt!
I should say that before I actually had my first experience with true kusherie, I was somewhat hesitant about many things Egyptian. I studied Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations for a year in a graduate program, and at that time, I was dying to see Egypt, particularly after reading Herodotus' second chapter in The Histories. A few years later, when I got my invitation to go to Yemen as a Peace Corps Volunteer, I was ecstatic that I would be in the same region. That is, until I met my first group of Egyptians.
I knew, of course, that I shouldn't have stereotyped them, but it was hard. They were a group of Egyptian teachers contracted to teach in the Yemeni school system. When I arrived in my village (very remote) after three months of training in the capital city of Sanaa, no one knew I was coming. The local school was glad to have an additional teacher, they just didn't know what to do with me. After an hour of discussion, they decided to put me in a very crowded house with their Egyptian teachers. I had a bed in a room with five other teachers. This didn't bother me right away, but it soon became a problem. Literally ten minutes after I had unpacked, I looked over to the foot of my bed to see one of the teachers squatting by my stereo, plug in hand. Before I could yell "no" he plugged it into an extension cord. The inevitable combustion of spark and smoke startled him and he dropped it on the floor (different electrical current). At that moment, I learned the colloquial Arabic term for "oops." I don't remember it. He kept his distance for a few weeks.
My Peace Corps driver who brought me to the village made a huge mistake and told the other teachers that I had additional money if I wanted Arabic lessons. They bombarded me. I was sympathetic to this, as I knew how little they earned, and they were supporting families. It was their exploitation of their Yemeni students that really burned me up. Soon after the term began, they informed me of their "enhancement practices" and more importantly, that I had to follow suit or the whole enterprise would crumble. This included charging students triple for their tests, providing correct answers for tests, and any other creative way to make a Riyal. I told them I would think about it, and left it alone.
They began to lobby me a few weeks later. The first attempts were over invitations to tea, where we chatted for an hour or so with elephant in the room slowly growing. They never dealt with me directly on the issue, but they tried all sorts of persuasion. I was offered gifts, gratuity, and guilt. I never caved in, and our relationship deteriorated, especially when it was my turn to go to the city to photocopy tests (I then was in charge of collecting the test fees). We finally came to a truce: I would no longer take their tests to photocopy, and I made my own tests and collected my own fees. They didn't lose their supplemental income, and I kept a bit of my integrity.
I did not get to know any of them very well. There was one teacher, Ahmed, who didn't participate in the gouging of his students. He was a gentle soul, and I wanted to get to know him. Two things ultimately prevented this though: 1) he caught grief for associating with me, and 2) I couldn't bear to visit his room. Ahmed would insist that I have a drink on every visit (no, not alcohol), and each one almost killed me. He would take a four inch glass, put two inches of Tang in it and two tablespoons of sugar. I cannot describe the experience!
So by the time I left Yemen, I had a very narrow view of Egyptian culture, dampening my desire to visit the country. It was nearly twenty years before I did make it to Cairo, and I loved it. By then, I had met many other Egyptian folk who weren't scratching to eak out an existence. As I began my overland trek from the east side of the Sinai towards Cairo, I met many very nice people and I had a good time. My primary mission was not necessarily to redeem my perception of Egyptians, it was to find and eat some kusherie.
I had an acquaintance who raved about this dish, the original Egyptian fast food. My friend couldn't really describe its contents, only that I had to try it or my trip was a failure. I looked forward to the challenge of finding authentic kusherie.
My first attempt was in a little village on the Sinai coast of the Red Sea. The village, Dhahab (Arabic for gold), is a popular diving spot. After a gorgeous seafood dinner, I returned to the waterfront the next morning searching for my first dish of kusherie. I was told enthusiastically that they could accommodate me and I waited for an hour. Finally, they brought me a plate of something and smiled broadly. I tried it and was unimpressed. An expert on the matter told me that it wasn't the real thing, so I continued my search.
I arrived in Cairo on Christmas Eve, struggling to find a hotel. I opted for an upscale place, and was determined to pursue my quest the next day, then visit the pyramids - in that order, I had my priorities. When I asked at the front desk in the morning, the desk clerk was a bit perplexed. He looked at me and said quizzically, "you want kusherie?" It was if I didn't know what I was asking for. Finally, a clerk next to him came over and told me there was a place just around the corner. I was excited.
I left the hotel and navigated through traffic (Cairo traffic is unreal, you drive with one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on the horn, and no foot on the break). I walked into a very small restaurant with a few tables. On a shelf on the wall were hundreds of little plastic containers. There was a line of food stations behind a small counter, and I stood there mesmerized as the chef took ladles of all kinds of ingredients and slowly constructed my dish. I paid (about 25 cents) and took it to a table. I dug in and it was incredible - different flavors, different temperatures, different textures. It was the best breakfast I ever had. It gave me the fortitude to travel out to the pyramids and haggle with the guides providing horse back rides. It was a wonderful day.
Postscript - I managed to find an even better kusherie place in Alexandria, and I am very pleased to report that there is now a Mr. Kusherie in Amman, Jordan. The world is spinning in greased grooves!

Here is a recipe for this intoxicating mixture!
http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=226794

A few words about the pictures above: The kusherie is on the bottom! A satisfied customer sitting in kusherie joint a few hundered meters from the Library in Alexandria is on the top.