Egypt

Cairo

Egypt has made its own ice cream, in its own idiom, for a century. Why has no guide ever counted it?

Egypt has made its own ice cream, in its own idiom, for a century, and no international guide has ever counted it. Groppi, the Swiss-founded café on Talaat Harb Square, is credited by Egyptian cultural press with introducing ice cream, eclairs and marrons glaces to the country in 1909 and served cassata to Faruq's court and to Rommel's imagined victory toast; its Adly Street sibling, nicknamed Groppi El-Shagara for the tree in its garden, still sells that cassata today while the flagship sits behind a locked door awaiting restoration. Mandarine Koueider, a Damascene confectionery family that crossed to Cairo in 1930, built a Zamalek institution on Levantine sweets and became known, according to Cairo360's 2024 editors' picks, for 'the tastiest ice cream across generations' via its yogurt-and-berry torte, not a European custard. Set against that inherited depth is a newer, small-batch layer: Dara Mohamed Ghoshesh trained in Milan in 2014 and opened one parlour with her father Ahmed in 2017, and now churns in-house daily from Egyptian-farm milk and butter across Maadi, Zamalek and New Cairo shops with no artificial flavour or colour on the board. Between a chocolatier who out-lived a monarchy and a Milan-trained founder three years into her second decade, Cairo has a real claim nobody has yet made for it.

Last checked 2026-08-22

City boundary

The Cairo Governorate. Giza is a separate governorate across the river.