Inside One of the World's Best Kitchens ft. Paul Farag

There is something pleasingly backwards about Paul Farag arriving in Cairo with kangaroo tails.

The Sydney-born chef grew up in an Egyptian household nearly a decade after his parents left Egypt for Australia, before spending much of his early career trying not to be defined by the food they brought with them. Eventually, he went in precisely the opposite direction. As founding chef of AALIA, Farag dug through Arabic cookbooks dating back centuries, recovering forgotten ingredients and techniques while returning to dishes he knew from home.

At Cairo Food Week 2026, that journey is being made in reverse. For his dinner at Sachi Park St., Farag has arrived with an unmistakably Australian pantry: finger lime, lemon myrtle, wattleseed, native pepperberry and Murray cod, alongside his own shatta and saharawi Agrumato oils. The finger lime becomes sherbet with Egyptian mango; the Murray cod is dry-aged and grilled over Sachi's coals.

“We’re gonna braise these kangaroo tails down, pick the meat off, incorporate it into an Egyptian sort of dish, fava bean or ful style,” Farag tells Scene Eats while unpacking kangaroo tails at Sachi.

The kangaroo ful makes a rather neat argument about the chef cooking it. His parents once carried Egyptian food into an Australian home; their son has returned carrying an Australian ingredient into one of Egypt's most familiar dishes.

It also places Farag squarely within Cairo Food Week's larger programme. Across ten days, Flavor Republic is bringing international and Egyptian chefs into kitchens across Cairo for collaborations, dinners and cultural exchanges, alongside exhibitions including Tables of Egypt. Visiting chefs span Copenhagen, Sri Lanka, Nicaragua and Italy, but the premise extends beyond importing restaurants: unfamiliar culinary histories are being placed in conversation with Egyptian ones.

Farag's dinner makes that exchange unusually literal. Australia supplies the kangaroo. Egypt supplies the ful. And somewhere between the two sits a chef whose cooking has spent years travelling in both directions.