The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

More and more restaurants are adopting the “Baladi chic” concept, serving traditional Egyptian comfort and street food in modern casual settings. One of those new concepts is Caizo, mainly serving hawawshi and shawerma. When trying Cairo’s street-style food, you need to set aside any healthy or subtle flavour ideas you may have. Traditional street food will hit you with an explosion of herbs, spices, and textures – that’s why we were excited to taste Caizo’s spin our popular street eats favourites.

Caizo is a container restaurant concept located in Platz, a complex that opened up in New Cairo, boasting a spacious green area with various restaurants and cafes all around. Since it’s an open-spaced park, all you have to do is place your order then choose a bench to enjoy your meal. Their menu is straightforward, serving only Shawerma, Hawawshi, and a few sides.

We decided to try everything on the menu; we started with the shawerma section; we got one Chicken Shawerma (18 LE) and one Meat Shawerma (20 LE). Both sandwiches were delicious; however, the best thing is that the chicken shawerma had fresh mint leaves that took the flavour to another, more sophisticated level. Moreover, the bread was fluffy, and both proteins were cooked to perfection. If we had one comment, it would be that the chicken shawerma came a bit cold. 

Next stop, the hawawshi. We ended up getting two; one Hawawshi (35 LE) and one Spicy Hawawshi (35 LE). The hawawshi was fantastic for sure; the meat was textbook perfect, it had excellent meat to fat ratio, and was perfectly seasoned. We couldn’t help but get a couple of refreshing beverages alongside this great meal—they only have two options; Sobia (15 LE) and Mango Juice (18 LE). Sobia is a traditional starchy, milky sweet coconut drink – and Caizo’s sobia is a thirst-quenching yummy drink for sure. The same goes for their mango juice; it had balanced sugar levels and tasted very fresh.

Perhaps the only genuine disappointment would be that their sugar cane pieces dessert wasn’t available – it would have been a great way to end our meal. Nevertheless, Caizo is a great place to have clean, affordable street food in a casual and fun setting.