Screams, Sweat & Sriracha: Inside Egypt’s Biggest F&B Showdown

There was a time roughly five years ago - which in Egypt’s F&B timeline counts as the Mamluk dynasty - when launching a successful restaurant required exactly two things: an industrial-strength shisha setup and at least five flatscreens showing BeIn Sports on loop. It didn’t matter what was playing. Football, fencing, underwater synchronized wrestling - just keep the screens on and the smoke billowing, and you were in business. Plates were optional. If you served food on actual ceramic instead of cardboard, congratulations - you were officially ‘fine dining.’

But then, something deeply unsettling happened: people started caring. About ingredients. About concepts. About décor that didn’t involve laminated menus and LED strip lights in seven shades of anxiety. And just like that, Egypt’s F&B scene began evolving at a pace typically reserved for Dubai Bling and bread prices. It’s now one of the fastest-growing industries in the country - second only to our waist-to-hip ratios, which, much like sourdough starters, are expanding with alarming enthusiasm.

Entering the food scene with all the subtlety of a fajita platter in a silent dining room is Million Pound Menu - a reality show that dares Egypt’s most ambitious culinary hopefuls to do the unthinkable: open a fully functioning restaurant, impress a panel of hardened investors, and survive 48 hours without weeping into the beurre blanc.

Produced by IMPCO (co-founded by Amr Mansi and Ahmed Luxor - the same duo behind Shark Tank), the show hands three chefs per episode a pop-up space in District 5 by Marakez, where they must prove that their concept amounts to more than a mood board and a well-lit Instagram grid. Real diners show up (after registering online, naturally). Real money is at stake. And yes, someone eventually plates a single scallop adorned with interpretive microgreens and calls it a ‘journey.’

Presiding over this polite chaos is a panel of actual industry operators - not consultants, not lifestyle bloggers, but people who’ve endured breakfast service on the first day of Eid. We’re talking Mirette Aly (The Lemon Tree & Co.), Ayman Baky (Baky Hospitality), Mohamed Abdelhak (Mo Bistro), Omar Fathy (Eatery), Loay Torky (Buffalo Burger), Kesmat El Mehelmy (Cake Cake and Kesmat Catering), and Sameh El Sadat (The Bakery Shop). Between them, they’ve launched hospitality empires, survived menu overhauls, and most likely extinguished a fire caused by a flaming wheel of imported cheese.

They determine which chef can make the leap from dreamer to operator - which, in industry terms, is the chasm between having a poetic concept about pickled turnips and actually sourcing, storing, pricing, and justifying them to a customer who believes their sandwich should arrive faster because they ‘followed you on Instagram.’

Because these days, launching a restaurant is less about culinary innovation and more about surviving a soft launch full of entitled friends, a supply chain held together with duct tape and denial, and a walk-in fridge that’s one sausage wheel away from quitting.

Still, one winner walked away with real capital, real mentorship, and the mildly terrifying promise of turning a vision into a viable, brick-and-mortar reality. It’s part dream, part pressure cooker - and in this economy, perhaps the most optimistic gamble one can make.