The 8 best Luxor street foods, ranked
Bowl of Egyptian koshari with lentils rice pasta and tomato sauce
Eight things you can eat off a street cart in Luxor for under $3, ranked by how good they are, how safely they travel from cart to mouth, and how much they’ll expand your view of Egyptian food.
1. Koshari
Egypt's national dish and Luxor's best cheap meal. A bowl of koshari — rice, lentils, macaroni, chickpeas, fried onions, and tomato-vinegar sauce — costs 25-40 pounds ($0.80-1.30) from a proper koshari shop and fills you for the rest of the day. The best in town is Koshari Abu Ashraf on Sharia Youssef Hassan, one block behind the Corniche, where the sauce has actual heat and the onions are crisp rather than soggy.
Ask for shatta (chilli sauce) and da’a (garlic vinegar) on the side. The trick is mixing everything thoroughly before eating; unmixed koshari is just piles of starch. Vegan by default. Portable if you get it in a takeaway container, though eating it hot at a plastic table with a bottle of water is the correct experience. Skip the koshari at hotels and tourist restaurants — the same dish for four times the price with none of the character.
2. Ta’ameya
Egyptian falafel, made with fava beans rather than chickpeas, greener inside, herbier, and better than any falafel you have had elsewhere. A sandwich in a piece of baladi bread with tahina, tomato, and pickle costs 15-25 pounds. The best carts are near the Souk al-Talat in the mornings, when the ta’ameya has just come out of the fryer and the bread is still warm from the bakery next door.
Watch it being fried before you order. Old oil is the enemy — dark, foamy, or smelly oil means walk away. Fresh oil is clear and the ta’ameya comes out light green inside. Vegan. Two sandwiches make lunch. Eat immediately; ta’ameya does not survive twenty minutes in a paper bag. Wash it down with a glass of fresh sugar cane juice from the neighbouring cart and you have spent under a dollar on a very good meal.
3. Foul medames
Slow-cooked fava beans, mashed with garlic, lemon, cumin and olive oil, eaten with fresh baladi bread. This is Egyptian breakfast and it is astonishing when it is done well. The pot has usually been on the fire since 4am. A bowl with bread costs 10-20 pounds and it is the meal that keeps west bank farmers going through a day in the fields.
Order it with an egg fried on top for another 10 pounds. Ask for a wedge of lemon and a chopped tomato on the side. The best foul carts open at 6am and are sold out by 10am, which is why tourists rarely eat it — they are still at hotel breakfast. Set an alarm one morning and eat foul in the street with the workers heading to the temples; it changes your relationship with the city.
4. Hawawshi
Spiced minced meat baked inside a flat bread pocket until the outside is crisp and the inside is juicy. A hawawshi from a bakery costs 40-60 pounds and it is the perfect walking meal — sealed, hot, portable, and unlikely to give you trouble because it comes out of an oven at 250C. The bakeries near the train station on Sharia al-Mahatta make the best ones.
Ask for it 'hara' if you like heat — spiced with chilli and pepper. The meat is usually beef, sometimes lamb, occasionally camel in older shops. Come at lunchtime when the batch is fresh; hawawshi bought at 3pm has been sitting under a warming lamp for two hours and the bread goes leathery. One hawawshi is a snack, two is lunch.
5. Shawarma from a proper spit
Shawarma is not really Egyptian — it is Levantine — but Luxor has good spits and it is one of the safest meats to eat from a cart because it cooks slowly and continuously. A chicken shawarma sandwich is 30-50 pounds, a beef one 40-60. The best ones are on Television Street north of the Corniche and along the road behind Luxor Temple.
The spit tells you everything. A fat, well-stocked spit turning slowly with juices dripping onto the base is safe and delicious. A thin spit, or one that has been sitting cold, is neither. Ask for garlic sauce (toum) rather than mayonnaise, and add pickled turnip if it is offered. Wrap style varies — some places do a rolled 'sandwich', some do it in pita — both are fine.
6. Roasted sweet potatoes
In winter, from November to February, small carts appear on the Corniche and around the temples with beat-up oil-drum ovens roasting sweet potatoes over charcoal. A large one costs 10-15 pounds, comes wrapped in newspaper, and is the perfect thing to eat while walking along the river as the sun goes down. Sweet, smoky, filling, absolutely safe.
Ask for the biggest one the vendor has; smaller potatoes are less caramelised inside. No sauce, no salt, no additions — sweet potatoes are perfect on their own. Vegan. This is a seasonal treat only; in summer the carts vanish because nobody wants a hot potato in 42-degree heat. Nostalgic, cheap, and a proper Egyptian winter street food that most tourists overlook.
7. Roz bel laban from a cart
Egyptian rice pudding, sold cold in small ceramic bowls from carts in the evenings around Luxor Temple. A bowl costs 15-25 pounds and it is the ideal dessert after a long walk. Cinnamon on top, sometimes crushed pistachios, sometimes a raisin or two. Sweet but not aggressively so, and cold enough to be refreshing in warm weather.
Watch how the bowls are stored. They should be in an insulated box with ice, not sitting in the sun. Eat with the small metal spoon provided and return the bowl to the vendor when finished — the ceramic bowls are reused and washed, which is why the whole system is so cheap. This is a summer evening treat as much as a food; sit on a bench on the Corniche and eat it while feluccas drift past.
8. Sugar cane juice
Not strictly food, but the classic Luxor street drink and it deserves inclusion. Fresh-pressed sugar cane juice from a cart costs 15-20 pounds a glass, is bright grassy sweet in a way no other drink is, and is made in front of you through cast-iron rollers. Every self-respecting Egyptian street has a cane juice cart. The best ones are on Sharia al-Mahatta and near the Souk al-Talat.
Drink it within a minute of pressing before it oxidises and turns bitter. Ask for it 'bidoun talg' if you are worried about ice — the juice itself is safe because the pressing is fresh, but the ice sometimes comes from questionable sources. In winter the juice is thinner and sweeter; in summer the cane is fuller and it is more filling. Half a glass is enough for most first-timers; it is very sweet.
Before you book
The questions people ask about West Bank, answered with this month’s numbers.
Yes, if you use common sense. Watch food being cooked, avoid anything sitting out warm for hours, and choose busy carts where the turnover is fast. Koshari, foul, ta’ameya, shawarma from a hot spit, and hawawshi from an oven are all safer than salads and uncooked foods. Water is a bigger source of trouble than food; drink bottled and skip the ice at unfamiliar places.
No. Point, smile, and use numbers. Every vendor sees enough tourists to understand basic gestures. Learning 'shukran' (thank you), 'kam?' (how much?), and 'hara' (spicy) will get you through comfortably. Written prices are rare on carts, so ask before ordering and expect a small tourist markup that is usually only a pound or two.
Breakfast (6-10am) for foul and ta’ameya, when it is freshest. Lunch (12-2pm) for hawawshi and koshari. Evening (6-9pm) for shawarma and roz bel laban. The Souk al-Talat carts run from dawn to about 5pm; the tourist-strip carts run later, until 10 or 11pm. Avoid anything sitting in mid-afternoon heat between 2 and 5pm.
Almost everything except shawarma, hawawshi, and egg-topped foul is vegan by default. Koshari, ta’ameya, plain foul, sweet potatoes and sugar cane juice all qualify. Egypt is one of the easier Muslim-majority countries for plant-based eating because the fasting traditions have produced a large repertoire of legume, grain and vegetable dishes that just happen to contain no animal products.
