Yes, it’s giving drama AND gluttony…So naturally, slay.
You know how the old saying goes; keep the drama for your mama…and she’ll likely bring it up over family dinner. Well, we might have added that last bit in, but in most cases, it’s true. Egyptian family dinners are, more often than not, akin to a global leaders conference in which any and all fallacies of governance, the people, or the state are brought up.
In the context of an Egyptian family dinner, this could manifest in why your grades aren’t as good as your fourth cousin thrice removed, when exactly you’re planning on proposing to the neighbours’ daughter, or why you’ve been coming home awfully smelling like cigarettes lately.
To put it plainly, dinners are confrontations, and given we have a couple dozen more to sit through this Ramadan, we’re bracing ourselves for the breakdowns by looking back at some of our favourite dinner scenes from Egyptian movies and series over the years.
X-Large | 2011
What do you do when you’re invited over for dinner? Well, the right, or polite, thing to do is you sit down, eat your food, say a few pleasantries, and not outstay your welcome. In Magdy’s - played by Ahmed Helmy - case, however? Well, you critique every single dish presented to you, because what can go wrong?
Ew’a Weshak | 2003
Being read for filth while simply trying to enjoy a meal? Well, welcome to an Egyptian family gathering. Though Ahmed Rezk and Ahmed Eid’s characters enjoyed quite the hearty lunch, they had to down it all with a series of targeted attacks, or as we like to say, tal’ee7 kalam.
Omar w Salma 3 | 2012
At some point during a family dinner, drinking dish soap does sound like an ideal situation. In Omar w Salma 3, Mai Ezzeldin’s titular character could not hold back when faced with her archnemesis (her ex husband’s new fling) and honestly? Sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
Al Tajroba Al Denmarkeya | 2003
A feast? Baby that’s just the appetiser. An iconic, referential scene from the early 2000s, Al Tajroba Al Denmarkeya’s breakfast montage is one that will perhaps outlive the apocalypse, and hell, even Cher.
Lan A’esh fi Gelbab Abi | 1995
No chairs? No Problem. For Saneya’s wedding, played by Nahed Roshdy, quite a feast was served up, but given that it was a ‘first come, first serve’ situation, it was a culinary bloodbath, with quite the amusing commentary.
Andaleeb El Dokki | 2007
Not the olive! Another fan favourite sequence - and incredible performance by Mohamed Henedy - the breakfast montage featured a failed ‘pull the cloth off the table’ moment which resulted in a very heartbreaking (if you’re the foodie you should be) waste of a perfectly set-up table.
Aris Men Geha Amneya | 2004
Open buffets? Well, that’s not an excuse to be messy. Taking on the mantle of Open Buffet CEO & Managing Director, Lebleba’s character made sure not a single forkful of rice went wasted, remaining unfazed even after Adel Emam’s character sought to throw her off course with quite the inappropriate - and under the proverbial table - slap.
Awdet El Nadla | 2006
You see, if you had to share a meal with the woman who stole your child and raised him to believe he was hers, you’d throw a few chicken thighs in her direction as well. When the ‘Nadla’ herself Abla Kamel threw some boiling hot chicken at Ghada Abdelrazek’s character, she not only ruined a perfectly ironed outfit, she became a meme icon for years to come.
Taymour w Shafika | 2007
First of all, the author of this article would like to make his opposition clear to the character of Taymour, played by Ahmed El Sakka, and what he represents. Now that’s out of the way, we’d say it was a genius move on Shafika’s part - played by Mona Zaki - to try to trigger a proposal by mentioning her other prospects. Yet when Taymour played dumb, the dinner soon went sour, and showed us that sometimes men are indeed…trash.
Mar 31, 2025
