Photo : Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Cairo · Talaat Harb, Downtown
Café Riche
Downtown's café of writers and conspirators, opened in 1908.
A small dark-wood room a stone's throw from Talaat Harb Square, opened in 1908 and still the literary headquarters of downtown Cairo. The portraits on the walls name who sat here — Naguib Mahfouz, Taha Hussein, the generation of the magazines and the newspapers. The 1919 attack on Prime Minister Youssef Wahba's carriage is said to have been planned from these tables. Old regulars and journalists keep the room going, and the place is content to be its own museum.
The extra bit
Everything worth seeing hangs on the walls, so take a table inside rather than one on the pavement.
Know before you go
Beer is served here, which is true of few places downtown and explains part of the evening crowd; that service has been interrupted before, so check on arrival. The kitchen is plain and predictable — the room is the reason to come, not the plate. Cash.
