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Alexandria and the Mediterranean Coast

Coastal

Alexandria is a seafood city and was for two millennia a COSMOPOLITAN one — Greek, Italian, Jewish, Armenian, Syrian, Maltese and French communities whose kitchens are still legible in its food, and whose departure after 1956 is a documented rupture. The food: FISH AND SEAFOOD above all, grilled or fried whole, or baked in a salt crust, or as SAYADEYA with rice and cumin-browned onion; sardine, bouri (mullet), bolti, shrimp, calamari and crab; TAGEN of seafood in a clay pot; and the city’s own liver sandwich, KEBDA ESKANDARANI, fried hot with chilli, cumin and garlic, which is genuinely Alexandrian street food. Also the Greek-descended pastry and the Italian-descended ice cream, and FESEEKH and RENGA at Sham el-Nessim. Westward along the coast to MARSA MATRUH and Sallum the population is BEDOUIN — Awlad Ali — speaking a Libyan-related Bedouin Arabic and eating a pastoral rather than a maritime diet, which the row records as a separate thing on the same coastline.

Atlas — where and when

Where in the world

Communities and languages

  • Alexandrians community documented
  • Awlad Ali Bedouin community documented

Languages: Egyptian Arabic, Eastern Egyptian Bedawi Arabic

What is recorded

  • Ptolemaic and Roman Alexandria: the Mediterranean grain trade, with Egypt as Rome’s granary. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to Bedouin Foodways documented

    West along the coast to Matruh the population is Awlad Ali Bedouin, pastoral rather than maritime.

  • related to Greek Foodways documented

    A cosmopolitan city whose Greek, Italian, Jewish, Armenian and Levantine communities largely left after 1956; the pastry and the ice cream remain.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.