Native beans or fuul (pronounced "fool") can be prepared in several ways. Boiled and mashed with tomatoes, onions and spices, they constitute fuul madammes, which are often served with a chopped boiled egg for breakfast. A similar mixture stuffed into aish baladi constitutes the pitta-bread sandwiches sold on the street.

Deep-fried patties of green beans mixed with spices are called taamiya (or sometimes felafel , the name of their Israeli equivalent) and are again served in pitta bread, often with a snatch of salad, pickles and tahina (a sauce made from sesame paste, tahini).

A common appetizer is torshi , a mixture of pickled radishes, turnips, gherkins and carrots; luridly coloured, it is something of an acquired taste, as are pickled lemons, another favourite.

Another cheap café perennial is makarona , a clump of macaroni baked into a cake with minced lamb and tomato sauce inside. It's rather bland but very filling. Similarly common is kushari , which is a mixture of noodles, rice, macaroni, lentils and onions, in a spicy tomato sauce (another sauce, made of garlic, is optional). These are sold in tiled stand-up diners, also called kushari.

More elaborate, and pricier, are fatir , which can be either sweet or savoury. These are a cross between pizza and pancake, consisting of flaky filo pastry stuffed either with white cheese, peppers, mince, egg, onion and olives, or with raisins, jams, curds or just a dusting of icing sugar. They are served at café-like establishments known as fatatri.

Most sandwiches are small rolls with a minute portion of basturma (pastrami) or cheese. Other favourites include: grilled liver ( kibda) with spicy green peppers and onions; tiny shrimps; and mokh (crumbed sheep's brains).

Lastly, there are shawarma - slices of marinated lamb, stuffed into pitta bread and garnished with salad and tahina - which are usually superior to the doner kebabs sold abroad, though foreigners often assume they are the same.

On the hygiene front, while cafés and tiled eateries with running water are generally safe, street grub is highly suspect unless it's peelable or hot.

Restaurant meals
The classic Egyptian restaurant or café meal is either a lamb kebab or kofta (spiced mince patties), accompanied or preceded by a couple of dips. The dips usually comprise hummus (made from chickpeas), tahina and babaghanoush ( tahina with aubergine).

In a basic place, this is likely to be all that's on offer, save for a bit of salad (usually lettuce and tomato based), fuul and bread. However, you may also find other grilled meats. Chicken ( firakh, pronounced "frakh" in Upper Egypt) is a standard, both in cafés and as take-away food from spit-roast stands. Pigeon ( hamam) is common too, most often served with freek (spicy wheat) stuffing. There's not much meat on a pigeon, so it's best to order a couple each. In slightly fancier places, you may also encounter pigeon in a tajine or ta'gell, stewed with onions, tomatoes and rice in an earthenware pot.

More expensive restaurants feature these same dishes, plus a few that are more elaborate. Some may precede main courses with a larger selection of dips, plus olives, stuffed vine leaves and so on - a selection known, as in Greek, as mezzes . Soups, too, are occasionally featured, most famously molukhiyya , which is made from stewing Jew's mallow in chicken stock - a lot tastier than its disconcertingly slimy appearance suggests. Two common main dishes are mahshi , comprising stuffed vegetables (tomatoes, aubergines, etc), and torly , a mixed vegetable casserole with chunks of lamb, or occasionally beef (which in reality may be donkey, water buffalo or camel meat).

Fish ( samak) is featured on restaurant menus in Alexandria, Aswan, the Red Sea Coast and Sinai. It is invariably grilled, served with salad and chips, and usually very tasty. There are many types, ranging from snapper to Nile perch; you're usually invited to pick your own fish from the ice box and it'll then be priced by weight. You may also find squid ( calamari), shrimps ( gambari) and octopus ( kaborya).

One confusion you'll often run up against is the notion that pasta , rice , chips (French fries) and even crisps (potato chips) are interchangeable. Order rice and you'll get chips, and your querying of the matter will be regarded as inexplicable.

Cheese, cakes, nuts and fruit
You can supplement regular cooked meals with a variety of fare available from corner shops, delicatessens, patisseries and street stalls.

There are two main types of Egyptian cheese : gibna beyda (white cheese), which tastes like Greek feta, and gibna rumi (Roman cheese), a hard, sharp yellow cheese. For breakfast you will often be given imported processed cheeses such as La Vache qui Rit ("The Laughing Cow" - a popular nickname for President Mubarak).

Nut shops ( ma'la) are a high-street perennial, offering all kinds of peanuts ( fuul sudani) and edible seeds. Lib abyad and lib asmar are varieties of pumpkin seeds, lib battikh come from watermelon, and chickpeas ( hummus) are roasted and sugar-coated or dried and salted; all of these are sold by weight. Most nut shops also stock candies and mineral water.

Cakes are available at patisseries (some of which are attached to quite flash cafés) or from street stalls. The classics will be familiar to anyone who has travelled in Greece or Turkey: baklava (filo pastry soaked in honey and nuts) - called basbousa in Upper Egypt; katif (similar but with shredded wheat); and a variety of milk- or cornflour-based puddings, like mahallabiyya (sweet rice or cornflour, topped with pistachio nuts) and most famously Umm Ali (corn cake soaked in milk, sugar, coconut and cinnamon and served hot).

Fruits in Egypt are seasonal and wonderful. In winter there are oranges, bananas and pomegranates, followed by strawberries in March. In summer you get mangoes, melons, peaches, plums and grapes, plus a brief season (Aug-Sept) of prickly pears (cactus fruit). Fresh dates are harvested in late autumn. Only apples are imported, and thus expensive. All are readily available at street stalls, or can be drunk as juices at juice bars.

Drinks
As a predominantly Muslim country, Egypt gives alcohol a low profile. Drinks consist primarily of tea, coffee, fruit juices and familiar brands of soft drinks. Invitations to drink tea ( shurub shai?) are as much a part of life in Egypt as they are in Britain, although the drink itself is served quite differently. Many Egyptian men accompany it with a sheesha.