Egyptian Junk Food

It is a little frustrating to be traveling in an exotic land, seeing all sorts of interesting eatables and being unable to partake of them.  But honestly in Egypt you have to be very careful lest you suffer catastrophic gastrointestinal consequences.  Here are a few of our admittedly timid choices-with my reviews for future travelers.

Apparently McDonald's has a presence in Egypt that allows one phone number to serve as their 24 hour a day delivery service to anywhere in the country other than a few isolated oases.  They have scooters, cars and even as in the above, their own little navy.  Cool enough, but the food is not different enough from their standard chow to justify eating there more than once.

I have found conflicting information on whether Borios are just the Egyptian version of Oreos or a straight up knock off of same.  I favor the former explanation as I have found an Egyptian article that describes Kraft buying the company that made Borios a few years back.  Usually you do not reward transparent counterfeiters in this fashion so I imagine prior to that they were made under license.  My fragmentary Arabic does not provide an answer, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Oreo might mean something unpalatable.  Oh, they taste just like Oreos, and helped pass a long train ride.

Ah, Twinkies, the Ur-snack food.  We were in Aswan and spotted a vendor carrying a tray of snacks back from a delivery to a local school yard.  We followed him back to his home base, a little store front and scored us some.  A little dry by US standards, but still possessed of the essential Twinkosity.  Mmmmm.

This might be upside down.  I am not sure.  Nor was I at the time.

My son and I were on our own, the rest of our group having made a side trip to Abu Simbal.  We asked a local where to get some good pizza.  We were directed to a place on a side street where there were no tourists.  It was up a flight of stairs.  Nobody spoke English.  The menu was as above.  I can manage a few words of spoken Arabic but cannot read it at all.  Somehow we ordered what we figured would be pepperoni pizza.  It was not.  I really can't identify all the ingredients that seemed to be in it, but we were hungry and decided to go for it.  Not too bad actually.

We both started taking Cipro within 24 hours.