First the food trucks brought us tacos. Then the knafeh and the bao. Now the crunchy lentil-laden Egyptian dish called koshari is set for the spotlight when it hits the streets of Sydney this weekend.
That's right, the city's newest mobile eatery El Qahirah (Arabic for Cairo) is set to roll into Grifter brewery in Marrickville on Saturday.
Pronounced El Kye-hira, the venture is the work of Cairo-born George Kaldas and Ishac Soliman, who met through their wives.
After years of cooking traditional dishes for family and friends, the pair were inspired to bring the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern flavours of Egypt to the city's burgeoning food truck scene.
And in pleasing news for vegetarians and vegans, the truck's opening menu is big on traditional meat-free fare made with pulses and vegetables.
"It's absolutely traditional," Kaldas says. "If that's how it's made in Egypt [then] that's how we make it."
Koshari, a classic dish ubiquitous in Egypt, is a mix of lentils, pasta nibs and rice topped with chickpeas, fried onions and a spicy sauce.
"Koshari is very, very Egyptian," Soliman says. "The sauces and fried onions give it a lot of depth … it sounds like an unusual combination but all together it's very tasty."
The two other menu items - taameya and fuul medames - both date back to the pharaohs. The former is a fresh, green falafel-like snack made with fava beans and fragrant herbs and spices, then served with tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, radish and tahini; the latter is a hearty breakfast of simmered fava beans with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and spices.
Both are served in a traditional flatbread pocket called baladi, cooked by a local Egyptian baker, and can be washed down with hibiscus tea.
Kaldas and Soliman plan to introduce meat into future menus, and travel all over Sydney and up the NSW coast.
El Qahirah food truck will pop up at Grifter brewery at 1/391-397 Enmore Road, Marrickville on Saturday February 18 (12-9pm), Sunday February 19 (12-7pm). Also at: Wayward brewery in Camperdown, on Friday, March 3 and Young Henrys in Newtown on Friday, March 10. See El Qahirah's Facebook page for details.