8 Best Restaurants in Egypt

Here, you can feast on Egyptian-style seafood, priced by weight and cooked to perfection, without having to visit the coast. The ordering process is streamlined: make your selection from the display, choose how you'd like it prepared (fried, baked, grilled, simmered in a clay tagine), head to a table, and wait for it to arrive. The butterfly shrimp and fish roe batarekh (tagine) with cream are both highly recommended. Prepare to get messy—most Egyptians eat their seafood by hand.

Step off the pedestrianized market street and into this small restaurant for fresh seafood. Take your pick of the catch, and the staff will tell you the price and cook it how you like it.

The InterContinental's à la carte seafood restaurant has a quiet beachfront location. You can eat under a canopy of fairy lights or in the circular templelike dining room. The entrées span the expected (an enticing seafood platter) to the imaginative (flaky grouper baked in a sea-salt crust or served in Provençale sauce), while the appetizers and desserts, including a formidable tiramisu, borrow influences from world cuisine.

What better place than a rustic waterfront shack to enjoy a lazy lunch or dinner? The weathered wooden deck of El Sayadin, overlooking the resort's main inlet, is the ideal place to take in the fantastic beaches and seascapes of El Gouna. The menu combines excellent seafood with Egyptian specialties. Start with a mezze plate and then tuck into the grilled catch of the day, salmon served three ways, or fritto misto (crispy fried seafood). The restaurant's about 10 minutes by foot from downtown.

Though you'll find decent fish dishes in nearly every Sharm restaurant, Fares is one of the town's best seafood restaurants, with grouper and snapper that's fresh from the Red Sea. This branch is near the Old Market shopping district; there's also a branch in Na'ama Bay.

On the waterfront side of the Alexandria Corniche, this is probably the biggest fish restaurant in the city and sees a regular crowd of locals who know they'll get excellent but simply cooked seafood plus a great view out across the harbor. The catch is priced by kilogram, and rice and salads are included. Choose your fish and ask them to price it, so you know how much you'll be paying. There's also a decent wine list featuring local labels.

One of the most upscale restaurants in Sharm, Fish Restaurant serves a short menu of nouvelle-style seafood, and your food is like a picture on a plate. Popular choices include expertly prepared fillets, calamari, and lobster. The silver service and outdoor terrace out in the mature garden just off the beachfront boulevard let you know that this restaurant is all about image and special occasions, and accordingly, the dress code is casual-elegant. A splurge here is rewarded with a better wine list and more attentive service than you'll find at the more mainstream restaurants.

Kadoura is a nationwide chain that got its start in Alexandria in 1950, and lucky for hungry visitors, it's every bit as good as its reputation. Fish is grilled with a delicious fresh tomato, garlic, and herb purée; calamari come lightly fried, tender, and tasty. Pick your seafood downstairs, grab a wood-block number, and sit upstairs. Everything else that comes to you—salads, tahini, drinks—is included in the price. It's very popular for lunch, especially on Fridays, when space is at a premium.