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

From sushi and burgers, to shawerma and sweet potato creations, 2016 saw several food bikes and trucks popping up across the streets and malls of Egypt. It’s a concept that looks like continuing well into 2017, too, with one of the newest contenders in the street food battle coming in the form of Shocks Burgers.

Located at Waterway in New Cairo at the time of our visit, Shocks Burgers is a classic silver 1970s Airstream food truck that is specialises in burgers, while also offering other sandwiches and appetisers. The design of the truck is definitely eye catching; the giant yellow lightning bolt, the black and white menu and the logo on certainly make it stand out. We’re here to talk about the food, of course, but we have to say that from the truck to the packaging, we couldn’t help but be impressed by the branding and overall neat presentation.

We kicked things off with ‘Sweet’ Chilli Cheese Fries (25LE) and Hot Cheese Poppers (25LE) as sides to our sandwiches. It seemed strange to mix sweet chilli sauce and cheese, but it turned out to be just regular chilli, which was seasoned well, but very dry. However, the fries were far from oily and the cheese sauce had a great consistency, making a decent side for our sandwiches.

Meanwhile, the hot cheese poppers came as five pieces of deep fried plain cream cheese with a spicy kick to it. The cheese was very stiff and didn’t melt or have that gooey effect we were expecting and the flavours were just overall pretty unremarkable.  

Moving to the burgers, Shocks offers four kinds, but we decided to keep things a bit ‘classic’ with the Triple B (58LE) which consists of two beef patties topped with cheese, beef bacon, tomato, lettuce and BBQ sauce, and served in a soft but thick bun. Although the patties lacked seasoning and had a slightly chewy texture to them, they were juicy and the patty-to-bun ratio was on point. However, there was too much BBQ sauce which was overpowering and the result was a very, very messy sandwich for street food that should be much easier to eat –  especially that there’s no place to sit and parking at Waterway isn’t the easiest task.

We also tried the Deep Chick (45LE) sandwich. The chicken was very crispy but tasted bland as if it wasn’t seasoned at all, while the promised mozzarella cheese and ‘sweet’ mushroom flavours got lost due to large amount of ‘Shocks Sauce’ which was similar to Thousand Island sauce in taste. Overall, the flavours were very unbalanced.

Finishing the meal with a Lotus Shake (25LE), the consistency was flawless and you could taste the unique caramel flavour of the Lotus biscuits in every sip, while bits of the biscuit added a great crunch.

In the end, we left Shocks Burgers with mixed feelings. Almost every dish had one or more missteps. At the same time, however, it’s a good fast-food substitute and we love the branding – which gives us hope that with one or two adjustments, it can become a big player on the scene.