Downtown Cairo’s Sweet Burgers Makes Kunafa Burgers

This is Scene Eats correspondent, Fatafeet El-Share', reporting live from Orabi street, Downtown Cairo with breaking news. Today, while walking down the expansive streets of Wust El Balad with our team’s content creator - it’s 2023, professional journalists now go on field missions with content creators, NOT photographers - desperately attempting to dislodge the overpowering smell of garlic from our noses, we caught the mostly unholy sight on camera. A man standing inside a tiny linoleum-lined desert shop called ‘Sweet Burger’ cut up a mouthwatering piece of kunafa...and placed it in a burger bun.

Dear readers, I cannot begin to describe the horror I felt as a young person, and I would like to offer my deepest condolences to Arab aunties everywhere for such triggering content, but this is a crime that needed to come to light.

I knew what we caught was not enough, this was blasphemy in the eyes of every child who grew up on Fatafeat and every mother committed to watching CBC Sofra, it warranted an investigation. I swallowed my fear and walked to the shop. Upon reaching the counter, I asked the owner about their specials (struggling to hold a smile in place). With a wide-eyed grin and iron-clad conviction he introduced me to their ‘kunafa burgers’ - a toasted burger bun enshrouding a large slice of kunafa. Nestled between the bread was not knafeh nabulsiyeh, au contraire, it was our sweet Egyptian version, thickly layered, stuffed with eshta, soaked in thick syrup, and sprinkled with pistachio.

The shop, thankfully, also offers a wide selection of other desserts, including thick slabs of gateaux - the likes of which were last seen being grabbed for Ahlam and Galal’s wedding in Om El A’rousa (1963) - and monstrously-sized sawabe’ zeinab which I’m glad to report were *chef’s kiss*.

Horrified but alive,

Fatafeet El-Share'