Giza Brings Egyptian Street Food to Milan With Style

In Milan, a newly opened street food joint is serving authentic Egyptian flavours with bold, uncompromising style. Giza, located on the touristic Corsa di Porta Ticinese among high-end fashion labels and concept stores, has brought a piece of Egypt to Italy’s economic capital.

“We’re trying to be ambassadors of Egyptian cuisine here in Europe,” says Ahmed Dawood, founder of Giza. Over the phone, Dawood and his wife, fashion and celebrity stylist Yasmine El Tazi, excitedly share the vision behind Giza. “The concept developed from a tasting during Yasmine’s birthday for her friends last year, to wanting to building a contemporary brand that could represent how creative and cool we as Egyptians could be.”In Milan, there is already a handful of Egyptian and Middle Eastern restaurants that cater to a diaspora hungry for a taste of home. Dawood does not aim to compete with them. Instead, he says, “We’re completing each other. Egyptian food in Milan is always aimed at Egyptians and Arabs, not Italian or Europeans. With Giza, we wanted to position our food differently, as a new flavour that deserves to take its place among other international cuisines.”

As such, Giza is not about nostalgia—it is forward and outward facing, with a visual identity draped in bold Arabic typography and an in-store playlist featuring contemporary Egyptian artists like Tul8te and Wegz. “It doesn’t always have to be pyramids and ancient Egypt and Um Kulthum and Abdel Halim Hafez.”Dawood was himself inspired by new concepts taking off within Egypt’s food scene, like Caizo, Marzipan, Carlo’s, and Khufu’s. “We’re all building on each other and trying to present Egyptian food on a new level.”
For Dawood, the trick lies in presentation. “Egyptian food can be quite tricky with regards to presentation. Something like molokhia can be hard to convince people of if they’ve never tried it before.” But Ahmed and Yasmine’s background positioned them well for the challenge.

Before moving to Milan with his wife last year, Dawood was a leasing director for El Gouna, helping many of its businesses grow. In Milan, he joined a culinary course knowing that he eventually wanted to open his own restaurant, and afterwards completed an internship with Michelin-starred Andrea Aprea. When the idea for Giza came, he went supermarket to supermarket researching Italy’s food tastes, seeing where parallels might exist between popular Italian ingredients and Egyptian ones.

“I don’t really believe in fusions between cuisines,” says Dawood. “But I believe in intersections, or cross-points, because there are so many commonalities between different cultures.” The menu he arrived at makes room for Italian sensibilities, but it does not compromise on authentic Egyptian flavour.“We have only seven sandwiches on the menu. Hawawshi is our best seller, but the biggest surprise for us was kebda [fried liver]. We expected our customers to be afraid of it, but in truth they’ve really taken to it.” Other sandwiches on the menu include sogok, moussaka, and sakalans, with sides like tahina and hand-cut fries also available.

The kitchen at Giza is a team of two: Dawood himself, and an Italian woman named Gloria. Dawood does not see himself as a chef, but rather as a businessperson and entrepreneur. To him, his hands-on approach in the kitchen is critical to ensuring the business remains scalable.

“Giza is not only a place that sells food, or a one-time thing. We want it to be a place where people come to witness our culture. We’re trying to build something scalable, something that could be not just in Milan but elsewhere in Europe and the Gulf.” And, one day, perhaps also in Egypt.