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BIG KING OF LITTLE CAIRO
Ali el Sayed dishes up politics, love and darned good Egyptian food in Astoria
Written by Jamie Feldmar • Photography by Daniel Krieger
ASTORIA - Step onto Steinway Street from Astoria Boulevard and your head gets foggy with the scents of hookah pipes and grilled lamb. Delis advertise fresh pitas and preserved lemons, and many signs are written in swirling Arabic. Locals call this strip of Steinway, between Astoria Boulevard and 28th Avenue, “Little Cairo.” At the very top of the main drag, in a storefront so tiny that most people simply pass by, there reigns the neighborhood’s most outsized, outspoken chef, Ali el Sayed.
Almost everyone refers to el Sayed, 57, simply as “Ali,” and almost everyone who’s been to his restaurant, Kabab Café, has a story to tell. “Oh, he’s a character and a half,” says Sooz Vasconcelos, who lives a block away from the restaurant. “There have been times I’ve brought him a piece of meat and said, ‘Ali, make me something with this,’” she recalls. “But then there are other times he’s recruited me to help bus tables when it’s crazy busy.”
“You come here to eat food on his terms. He cooks his way, but it’s for you. He’s kind of a mad scientist in the kitchen, but as long as you show him respect for what he does, you won’t meet a lovelier guy,” said Karl Wasserman, another local who eats at Kabab Café regularly. Inside, Ali’s kitchen takes up most of the floor space, leaving room for some 17 haphazardly arranged seats, scattered with an assortment of pillows and cushions. The walls are covered with mismatched tapestries, mirrors, paintings and wooden masks. The kitchen is long and narrow, leaving room for Ali, one or two assistants and not much else. There is an oven, a grill and a single portable burner to cook on. Food and supplies are stored above and below every possible surface.
Despite the size of his restaurant, Ali is not a small man. He is tall and broad, with large hands that cup both lamb shanks and delicate herbs with equal skill. His presence fills the room, as does his voice. Ali talks to everyone, whether he knows them or not.
The first time I walk in, Ali tells me, “You should trust your chef more than your accountant. The chef is the one who knows what you like, what you hate, what you’re allergic to or what you have a craving for. I want to make all of my customers the king and queen of my heart. I put a lot of love and work into my food, and I want my customers to know it. But if you’re not willing to allow yourself to be happy from my service, then you don’t deserve to be here.”
Ali’s food is soulful and bold, and some of his offerings, which include offal (organ meats) from goats and lambs, are not for the weak of stomach. He employs spices liberally, and when he saw me scribbling down the names on the bottles one night, he pulled them away and chastised, “If you want to know what I’m using, you ask me. Talk to me.” Almost all of Ali’s produce and meats, including the offal, come from neighborhood markets. “Every day I get up and drive around and grocery shop. I never eat at home. I shop for food and eat; I cook for other people and eat. I eat everywhere I go, all day,” he said.
Ali grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and came to America 34 years ago, after studying chemistry. He came first to New Jersey, then quickly migrated to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. After working in Manhattan restaurants for several years, Ali opened Kabab Café on Steinway Street 23 years ago. Now Ali holds court over his tiny kingdom, proclaiming his thoughts and opinions at will. He is obsessed with food history. “Egyptian cuisine is the most virgin cuisine to come to the West,” he says as way of introducing a brief history of Middle Eastern immigration patterns. “In the early 1800s, Syrian, Palestinian and Lebanese men came to the West. They didn’t know how to cook a damn thing, so what did they bring with them? Street food!”
Ali is growing increasingly animated as the talks, swinging his cleaver at a stack of tiny raw quails. “So by the time Egyptians come to America in the 1960s, there’s already this idea of ‘Middle Eastern’ cuisine, but it’s not cuisine, and it’s not Egyptian!” The quails are thrown into a bowl with garlic, mashed herbs and pomegranate sauce to marinate. “So if you ask me, ‘am I cooking traditional Egyptian cuisine?’ I’ll answer that I am cooking what I love,” he says, while putting the quails into the oven to roast with potatoes, eggplant and peppers. Ali also believes that food is political.
“Food is the best presentation of the history and suffering of a nation,” he says before launching into a winding history of kushari, an Egyptian dish by way of India by way of England. As he stirs together rice, lentils and a small mountain of spices, Ali begins: “In India, there is a dish called khichdi, which is like this,” he says, waving at the contents of the pan. “One hundred years ago, when the British occupied India and Egypt, they sent Indian troops down into Egypt”—he pauses to dump the mixture into a pot of broth with dried macaroni—“and the Egyptians took khichdi and added other things, like this pasta, and changed the name to kushari,” he explained.
Ali’s version involves a vinegar-laced spicy tomato sauce and caramelized onions heaped high on the bowl. It’s filling and deeply comforting, a mixture of staple foods come to life.
When asked about his retirement plans, Ali laughs. “I’ll die standing up!” When I ask if he’ll ever move to a larger space, he responds, “Why would I? This is what it feels like when you walk into an Egyptian home. My food is an expression of my heart and passion. If you don’t cook with love, it’s not worth it to cook.”
Kabab Café, 25-12 Steinway St., Astoria, 718-728-9858
Recipe-Rama! Kushari from Kabab Cafe
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