Photo : Bermawy777 — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Cairo · Al-Hussein, Gamaliya
The cafés of al-Hussein
Not an address but a habit: chairs out on the square, a tea, a shisha, at any hour.
Between the mosque of al-Hussein and the entrance to Khan el-Khalili, mismatched chairs belonging to a dozen unsigned cafés take over the square, and not one of them prints a menu. The best known, El-Fishawy, has its own entry in this guide and its own flow of tour groups — this is about the chairs on the square itself, cheaper and without a queue. You sit where there is room, order tea, karkadeh, a sahlab in winter, a shisha, and stay. The show is the passing traffic: families coming out of prayer, hawkers, wedding processions, the drums of a mawlid. Nothing shuts for the night, and in Ramadan the square is livelier at two in the morning than at noon.
The extra bit
Nothing is posted here, so ask what the tea and the shisha cost before they land on the table; a price agreed in advance beats an argument at the end.
Know before you go
You are on a pavement, with the noise, the dust, the hawkers who never stop and very few toilets. Cash only, in small notes. Friday in the middle of the day sends the whole quarter towards the mosque, so come before that, or later in the afternoon.
