Remember election night, when for a minute there Astoria felt like the center of the world, with people spilling out from shawarma spots and hookah bars onto upper Steinway Street, the whole neighborhood erupting in cheers? That was fun!
Also fun? Eating on upper Steinway Street literally any and every other night of the year, at Levant, say, or Zyara, or at the incredible Cairo Feteer, which opened in the summer of 2024, and last week fed me one of the best, most memorable meals of the year.
The place to start at Cairo Feteer is, obviously, with the feteer, which is like stuffed Egyptian pizza made from almost translucently thin dough bundled around all manner of meats or fishes or vegetables, then brushed with ghee and blasted in an oven, until the whole enormous package is rendered flaky on the outside, melty and gooey within. I had the "mixed feteer" here the other day, filled with sausage, ground beef, multiple cheeses, black olives, several types of peppers, probably other things. It was fantastic, especially when dipped in the thick, tangy white sauce.
I imagine there exists bad feteer somewhere in the world, but between Cairo Feteer, Levant, and the nearby Mum Feteer, apparently they're only slinging the good stuff here on Steinway. In fact, the feteer I had at Cairo Feteer was made by the same dude who was flinging around the dough for me at Levant last November—it's like he's my own personal traveling feteer chef!
(My Arabic is non-existent, so we couldn't really chat about the situation, but when I showed him my Levant article from a year ago, my man absolutely lost it. Seriously, you will never see anyone so delighted about anything as this feteer maker was about having his photo on Hell Gate.)