Balaadi chef defies soaring prices

Ashraf Sadek

Cairo

While soaring food prices have affected a dozen of his competitors of restaurant owners, balaadi chef Rafaee el-Rifaae of el-Saaydia Restaurant in the popular Cairo district of Bab el-Shaariya stays in business thanks to offering consumer-friendly meals to hundreds of relatively poor Egyptians, who have a palate for good food.

During the day, workers, students, travellers, shoppers and employees flock to Rafee’s restaurant to eat a hot Egyptian meal that consists of rice, vegetable, soup, a quarter of chicken, green salad and two loaves of baladi bread for just LE12.5 ($1.40).

“Like the rich people, the poor have to eat a delicious, healthy and cheap meal too,” Rafee shrugs. “And, I have to cook it for them,” he says proudly.

Rafaee says that he has been in this restaurant, whose name means the Upper Egyptians, for more than 20 years during which he learned the art of Egyptian cooking at the hands of Master Abdul Razek, who was the personal chef of late legendary singer Abdul Haleem Hafez.

“About 20 years ago, the same meal was sold for just 50 piasters.  But because the prices of everything went up  after the January 25 Revolution, the meal prices rose too and there is not much I can do about this,” Rafaee said.

Over the past two decades, Egyptians eating habits and taste have changed thanks to the increasing number of fast-food restaurants.

“But, the ordinary (balaadi) people still favour eating the traditional steaming ‘red dishes’ (vegetables cooked in heavy tomato sauce), rice, boiled and fried meat or chicken, green salad and balaadi bread,” Rafaee said, adding that his Bab el-Shaariya customers refuse any other type of food rather than these dishes.

“Our customers do not eat cold sandwiches or hamburger, or any boiled or sauteed vegetables. They also do not appreciate Lebanese, or Gulf food,” Rafaae said, adding that he cooks eleven types of Egyptian-style vegetables each day to meet the needs of his customers.

“We start preparing the food at 5:00 A.M. so that the breakfast, lunch and dinner meals are ready for the customers, who start flocking to the restaurant at 6:00 A.M,” he said, adding that Egypt is a prominent country when it comes to food, which is tastier and healthier.

Rafaee said that there was a bit of a ‘food war’  between his restaurant and its neighbours over the prices of meals.

“It is a ridiculous war between the restaurants of Bab el-Shaariya. Just for laughs, the ‘vegetable war’ which was followed by the “chicken war ; as if the owners had nothing better to do in this poor and densely populated neighbourhood,” he said.

Rafaae said that restaurant and eatery owners in the downtown area are charging customers more money for the meals that their actual prices.

“It seems that the era of cheap food is over,” he lamented.

He said a variety of factors have contributed to soaring vegetable, rice, meat, chicken, cooking fat prices, which, even if they ease, will not return to the lower levels which the Egyptian consumers are used to.

However, he said that the Government’s moves to curb rice exports to ease domestic prices have worked.

Rafaae regrets that the cost on the street of the popular fuul mesdames (vava beans) sandwich, made with bean stew, salad and spices inside a piece of shami bread, has risen by 25 per cent to reach LE1.50.

“The Government has to do something about this like growing more fuul that is needed to satisfy the nation’s most needy and stop promoting wheat and cotton cultivation at the expense of legumes,” he said.

He also said that his restaurant not only feeds the people, but also helps poor families feed themselves too.

“Female household leaders of the neighbourhood help the restaurant clean the vegetables and wash the dishes each day. In return, they receive a daily wage and free meals too,” he explained.

“It makes these women feel good because they earn money and eat food for free,” he said.

The restaurant – despite the soaring prices – buys hundreds of kilos of fresh vegetables from Suuq Bab el-Shaariya, a nearby wholesale market, each day, and the women wash, peel and clean them so that they become ready for cooking by Raafae before six o.clock.

He kindles a huge fire under big cauldrons in each morning to make the day’s menu that makes him a very proud Egyptian balaadi chef.

“I feel like I’m flying when I see people mopping their dishes with bread morsels and licking their greasy fingers after each meal,” Rafaae said before shoving in chicken dishes and large trays of potatoes into a giant oven.

After 6:00 pm, all the cauldrons are almost empty and Rafaae prepares himself to go home to eat dinner with his wife and children.

“Like any Saaedi husband, I never cook  at home because this this the responsibility of my wife,” Rafaae said.

“But, the boys love my cooking when they come to the restaurant,” he said.

Even when times are tough, the Egyptian humble people of Bab el-Shaariya still eat in this balaadi restaurant and enjoy what they eat.

“God has blessed Egypt and created its food recession-proo,” he said, lamenting that the number of balaadi cooks in Egypt has sharply dropped over the past 20 years.

“Look at the nearby Qahwaat el-Tabakheen (Arabic for cooks’ cafe). It is almost empty of those men, who cooked the most delicious balaadi food and taught the young the art of its cooking for the poor people in Bab el-Shaariya,” Raafae said.

The total number of people who use el-Saaydia Resturant is not known but the upward trend is one sign of Egypt’s economic downturn in which the rising price of other basic goods have pushed many people on low incomes into hardship.