Chef Marwa Mehanna Hosted Bespoke Dining Experience at Downtown Cairo

Cairo has no shortage of places to eat. What it lacks, perhaps, are places built around the act of gathering.

The latest edition of Ismailia Downtown’s bespoke dinner series placed chef Marwa Mehanna at the centre of the table. Held on June 16 at Tchai Teahouse, tucked within the courtyard of Tamara Haus in Downtown Cairo, the evening drew on Mehanna’s interests in food, design and hospitality, treating dinner as a cultural exchange.

“The idea was to make a supper club with memberships for people who care about art, food, and design, all combined,” Mehanna says.Rather than centring a single cuisine, the evening explored the meeting point between cultures, using saffron as its guiding ingredient and Egyptian flavours as its foundation.

The menu was built around saffron, a spice widely used across the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond. “My dishes are all inspired by my grandmother, who is Turkish-Moroccan, and both countries use a lot of saffron. Karim Mekhtigian, the owner of Tamara Haus, is also Armenian and they use a lot of saffron in Armenia,” Mehanna says.Guests moved through a sequence of dishes designed to progress gradually over the course of the evening. The meal opened with crisped vine leaves and charred peppers before moving into mango ceviche salad and charred watermelon with date molasses, dishes that reflected the menu’s broader conversation between Mediterranean flavours and local ingredients.For the main course, coal-grilled wild-caught prawns were served with saffron butter and burnt lemon alongside grilled shrimp. A vine leaf fatteh layered with pomegranate, pine nuts and almonds was presented as a shared dish for the table.Dessert continued along the evening’s saffron theme with a saffron rose tiramisu, providing a calm close to the meal.While the menu was specific to saffron in an ode to Mehanna’s heritage, the broader concept will continue to evolve through future dinners and collaborations. The format remains focused on bringing together food, design and conversation, with each gathering shaped by a different creative perspective.