Egyptian Falafel Is Green Inside: What to Order in St. Louis
Revised November 6, 2026
What is a typical Egyptian dish?
Koshari. Rice, brown lentils and short macaroni layered in one bowl, topped with chickpeas, a cumin-heavy tomato sauce and crisp fried onions, then finished at the table with garlic-vinegar daqqa and chili shatta. It is meatless, cheap and filling. Ful medames, the stewed fava bean, runs a close second.
Keep reading ↓Split the patty open with your thumb. If the inside is green, packed with parsley, dill and cilantro worked into ground fava beans, you are holding Egyptian falafel. If it is beige, you are holding everybody else’s.
That one color is the fastest way into the whole cuisine, and you can run the test without leaving the Delmar Loop. Ranoush, the family-owned Syrian restaurant at 6501 Delmar Blvd, describes its falafel on its own menu as “lightly fried balls of spiced chickpeas with a hint of coriander.” That is the beige one, the Levantine standard, made by people who know it well. Eat that first. Then find ta’meya, the Egyptian version, and the difference lands on your tongue before you have finished chewing.
Here is the catch. Koshari and ful medames are home cooking first, and in St. Louis the surest way to eat them tonight is a grocery order.
And that order exists, out on Manchester Road. MidEast Market at 14375 Manchester Rd lists these on its website: California Garden fava beans labeled Egyptian, Baraka split fava beans, Farida minced molokhia, and Ziyad dried hibiscus for karkade. The store says orders placed before 4 pm get same-day delivery. Warm a can of the fava with olive oil, lemon and cumin, tear some bread, and you are eating ful before the kettle boils.
So here is what each dish is, what it should look like, and what to put in the cart.
What is a typical Egyptian dish?
Koshari. Rice, brown lentils and short macaroni layered in one bowl, topped with chickpeas, a cumin-heavy tomato sauce and crisp fried onions, then finished at the table with garlic-vinegar daqqa and chili shatta. It is meatless, cheap and filling. Ful medames, the stewed fava bean, runs a close second.
A full bowl is heavy. Every layer has a different chew: soft rice, earthy lentils, springy macaroni, firm chickpeas. The onions on top are sliced thin and fried until they turn dark and shatter under the spoon, and that scorched-sweet smell with vinegar cutting through it is the whole dish announcing itself.
Ful medames is the other honest answer, and plenty of Egyptians would name it first. Dried fava beans stewed low and slow until the skins go tender, mashed roughly with the back of a spoon, then dressed with olive oil, lemon and cumin. It is a working breakfast, not a special-occasion plate.
Both say the same thing about this food. Beans sit in the middle of the plate, not off to the side, and that holds across much of the continent. Our guide to what African food is and what to order in St. Louis runs into the same idea from Ethiopia and West Africa.
Why is Egyptian falafel green inside?
Because it is made from fava beans, not chickpeas, and the herbs go in by the fistful. Ta’meya is ground dried fava worked hard with parsley, cilantro, dill, scallion, garlic, coriander and cumin. The patties are flatter, often crusted in sesame, and the inside is softer and moister than the chickpea kind.
Most Americans have only ever eaten the chickpea version, which is why the Ranoush test works so well. Same fryer idea, a completely different bite. Once you have tasted both, you will spot a fava patty from across a counter.
In Egypt the mint tea is strong black tea with fresh mint pushed down into a scalding glass, sugared before it reaches you, and you drink it hot anyway.
What goes into koshari, layer by layer?
Six parts, built in order, and the order is the point. The bottom stays fairly dry, the middle gets sauced, the top stays crisp. Then you stir the whole thing together yourself once you have tasted it.
The base
Medium-grain rice cooked with brown lentils so the grains take on color, then a layer of small macaroni, elbows or short tubes, boiled separately and kept plain. Chickpeas go on next, cooked soft.
The sauce and the onions
The sauce is tomato reduced with garlic, cumin and a hit of vinegar, thinner than a pasta sauce and much more sour. Onions get sliced fine, salted, patted dry and fried deep until they go mahogany. Fresh ones break. Tired ones bend, and you can tell from the first spoonful.
Daqqa and shatta
Daqqa is garlic, vinegar, often lemon and cumin, loose enough to pour, and it goes on generously. Shatta is the chili sauce: red, sharp, built from chilies with garlic and vinegar, and usually the only hot thing on an Egyptian table. Start small. The bottle is right there.
What do Egyptians eat for breakfast?
Ful medames and ta’meya, with bread, early. Add a boiled egg, some soft white cheese, a plate of raw tomato and cucumber, olives. Tea afterward, always.
The cooking of ful is the entire skill: hours over low heat until the starch thickens the liquid around the beans. It arrives in a shallow dish, mashed partway, then finished with oil, lemon, cumin, chopped tomato and sometimes tahini.
Baladi bread does the work of a fork
Baladi bread is whole wheat, dusted with bran, baked in a very hot oven until it puffs into a round with a pocket. Tear off a piece, fold it against your thumb into a small shovel, and scoop. No fork touches the ful.
What is molokhia, and will you like it?
Molokhia is a soup of jute mallow leaves, minced to almost nothing and cooked in broth, usually chicken. The texture is slippery and faintly thick, closer to okra than to spinach, and people either love that or they don’t.
What makes it worth ordering is the taqliya. Garlic gets crushed and fried in ghee with ground coriander until it sits just short of burnt, then the sizzling fat goes into the pot and the pan hisses. Eat it over rice with the chicken it was cooked with and a squeeze of lemon. You will know inside two spoonfuls.
At home, the minced kind is the shortcut, and MidEast Market lists Farida and Sultan minced molokhia.
Mahshi, hawawshi and the plates that come out for a feast
Mahshi means stuffed: grape leaves, cabbage leaves, hollowed zucchini or peppers packed with short rice, dill, parsley, mint and tomato, then simmered in tomato broth until the vegetable goes soft. Cold mahshi the next day is arguably better.
Hawawshi is the sandwich to know. Spiced minced beef or lamb with onion, parsley and chili gets pressed inside a round of baladi, then baked until the crust crisps and the fat soaks in from the inside out. Messy in the correct way.
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How is Egyptian food different from Turkish or Levantine menus?
Fava instead of chickpeas in the falafel, whole-wheat baladi instead of pale pita, and a cumin-and-coriander spine where a Levantine kitchen reaches for sumac and za’atar. Egyptian cooking also spends less time over charcoal.
Turkish menus lean on the grill and on wheat: kebabs over coals, pide out of a hot oven, yogurt on everything. Egyptian menus lean on the pot. If kebab is your comfort zone, our piece on what Turkish food is and what to order in St. Louis maps that grill.
Greek and Levantine tables feel closer: tahini, lemon, olive oil, stuffed vine leaves, rice pudding. A local guide to Greek and Mediterranean food in St. Louis is the next stop if mezze is what you actually want.
What should you order the first time?
Koshari, ta’meya, a plate of ful, and bread. Split it between two people so nobody has to commit to a full portion of anything unfamiliar.
Eat the koshari plain for three bites before you add a thing. Then a little daqqa, then a little shatta, then stir. Second time, go heavier: hawawshi, molokhia over rice, mahshi if they made it that day. Ask what came out of the kitchen an hour ago. That answer beats anything printed.
What to drink, and how the sweets work
Karkade is the one to try. Dried hibiscus steeped into a deep red drink, hot or ice cold, tart like cranberry, usually sweetened hard. Ask for less sugar.
Dessert starts with roz bel laban, a thick, milky rice pudding served cold, sometimes with cinnamon or pistachio. Om ali is the extravagant one: torn pastry baked in sweetened milk with coconut, nuts and raisins until the top browns and the middle sets soft.
Hungry now? Browse Egyptian food around St. Louis on St Louis Near Me Directory, and when you find ta’meya on a menu, order it next to the koshari in the same sitting.
If you’re the kitchen frying ta’meya or the grocery stocking minced molokhia, the customers typing “koshari near me” have almost nowhere to land. Own a spot like this? List your kitchen and get more customers from the people already searching for this food, so they walk in hungry instead of giving up and cooking at home.
If you cook it at home
The pantry is short. Cumin and coriander, dried mint, brown lentils, short macaroni, medium-grain rice, dried fava beans, chickpeas, tomato paste, white vinegar, olive oil, ghee, tahini. MidEast Market on Manchester Road carries the fava, the tahini and the minced molokhia; the rest is in any supermarket.
Frequently asked questions
What does koshari taste like?
Savory, sour and toasty rather than spicy. The tomato sauce is thin and vinegar-forward with cumin behind it, the lentils taste faintly earthy, the fried onions bring a burnt-sugar sweetness, and the garlic-vinegar daqqa cuts through everything. Heat only arrives if you add shatta yourself. Texture matters as much as flavor: soft rice, chewy macaroni, firm chickpeas and a shattering crisp layer on top.
Is Egyptian koshari healthy?
It has real strengths and one honest weakness. Lentils and chickpeas bring plant protein and fiber, the dish is meatless as a matter of tradition, and the sauce is mostly tomato and garlic. The weakness is volume: it is a large portion of starch, and the onions are deep-fried. Eat a moderate bowl, go easy on extra oil, add the vegetables and lemon, and it holds up fine.
What is a typical breakfast in Egypt?
Ful medames and ta’meya with baladi bread, eaten early. Around them you will usually find a boiled or fried egg, soft white cheese, a plate of raw tomato, cucumber and scallion, olives, and sometimes a spoon of tahini to stir into the beans. Tea follows, strong and sweet. It is a bean-and-bread breakfast, closer to a working meal than a pastry-and-coffee habit.
What are some traditional Egyptian dishes?
Koshari, ful medames and ta’meya lead the list. Then molokhia, the slippery jute-leaf soup finished with fried garlic; mahshi, meaning vegetables stuffed with herbed rice; hawawshi, spiced minced meat baked inside bread; fattah, the layered bread-rice-and-meat dish served at Eid; and hamam mahshi, stuffed roast pigeon. For dessert, roz bel laban and om ali. To drink, karkade and strong mint tea.
What can shawarma be eaten with?
Bread first. An Egyptian shawarma usually goes into baladi with tahini, pickled cucumber or turnip, and sliced onion. Order it as a plate instead and the meat arrives with rice, french fries, a tomato-and-parsley salad, extra tahini and sometimes a garlic sauce for dipping. Pickles do more work than people expect, because the fat needs something sour to push against.
Is there Egyptian shawarma?
Yes, and it is everywhere in Egypt. The spit and the technique are shared across the region, so the Egyptian version isn’t a copy of anybody so much as a local dialect of the same dish. Beef or veal shows up more often than lamb, chicken is common, tahini leads the sauces, and the wrap is typically baladi bread rather than thin flatbread.
What is molokhia made of?
Jute mallow leaves, minced extremely fine, cooked in chicken or rabbit broth. The finishing step is taqliya: crushed garlic fried in ghee with ground coriander, then poured into the pot while still sizzling. Some cooks add a squeeze of lemon. The leaves release a natural thickener, which is where the slippery texture comes from, and frozen minced molokhia works nearly as well as fresh.
Is baladi bread the same as pita?
They are cousins, not twins. Both puff in a hot oven and both form a pocket, but baladi is made with whole-wheat flour, dusted with bran, and carries a darker color, a nuttier taste and a chewier pull. A long ferment gives it a faint sourness too. Pita tends to be paler, softer and milder. Baladi handles a heavy stew better.
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