Kabab Café

Ali El Sayed has run this tiny room on Steinway Street since 1989 — the first Egyptian business on the stretch now known as Little Egypt — and he still cooks from what looked best at the market that morning rather than from a fixed menu. The room is dim and seats about twenty; from the street it can be hard to tell whether it is open at all.

Egyptian cooking is the Nile's food: fava beans, herbs, cumin and pomegranate. Let Ali steer, but ask for the mixed platter, with Egyptian falafel — made from fava beans, so it is green inside — and fiery shatta; then roasted cauliflower, lamb chops with pomegranate molasses, or, for the brave, calves' brains sautéed with cumin. It is less a restaurant than an audience with the chef.