Cairo for The Food Pilgrims: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Pilgrimage one: the national dish at the canteen that does it best, with the crisp onion top, garlic vinegar and a fiery sauce on the side.

Walk the spice, gold and perfume lanes of the great bazaar; buy dukkah and dried hibiscus and let the vendors give you a taste.

Dinner on mezze and the house hawawshi, a spiced meat bread baked to order in a café named for the novelist.

A plate of fuul medames with a fried egg, tahini and pickles, scooped up with warm baladi bread, in the heart of Downtown.

Go from bakery to baker along the street, with stops for basbousa and a taste of fresh sugar cane juice at the roadside press.

Whole grilled pigeon, kofta and baba ghanoush in a garden on the Giza canal, eaten the Egyptian way, with Saturday family tables nearby.

Serious dinner: Egyptian home cooking at the best-known address in Zamalek, with molokhia, stuffed pigeon and warm oum ali to finish.

Egyptian street food redone with care: taameya in a crisp shell, a sandwich of liver, and a hibiscus drink in a bright shop.

Join a food market walk from the lanes behind al-Hussein to the old bakery; you taste your way from stall to stall.

Grilled lamb and kebab in the old quarter by lantern light, fat and smoke and salty bread on the side.

A tourist-era classic whose tables are still a good place for a plate of falafel, fuul and a stuffed pigeon before the airport.

Last stop for the pantry: spice sellers weigh out dukkah, hibiscus and cumin by the bag; ask for the sample and the weight before paying.