This Breakfast Pop Up is Two Seasoned Experts’ “Break from the Cuffs”
Curating intimate breakfast pop ups, this is why Cairo Food Week’s Reem Khamis and Akram Lotfy are taking time off their plates for ‘The Early Birds Club’
For seasoned culinary professionals, the clock never stops ticking. With international events to cater to, high-end dinners to orchestrate, and businesses to run, time becomes a scarce ingredient. So why is it that two pivotal players in Cairo’s culinary scene decided to carve a few slices into their schedule to fit a breakfast pop up? Well, the answers seem to be aplenty.
Founded in December of 2023 by food consultant, kitchen manager, and founder of Egyptian sauce brand Tafeeda, Akram Lotfy, and chutney alchemist, food journalist, and chef Reem Khamis, The Early Birds Club is a series of intimate breakfast pop ups held around Cairo. However, these pop up breakfasts represent more than just a side hustle for their orchestrators, becoming a “creative outlet not bound by setlists and requirements,” co-founder Reem Khamis tells SceneEats.
The Early Birds Club’s pop ups serve an ever-changing array of menu items based on the ingredients’ seasonality, yet the core of the menu operates on a very simple set of rules; quick, casual, healthy, and delicious. A few staples on the menu are the ‘Egyptian Sando’, which features a variety of traditional Egyptian breakfast items (think a combination of eggplants, roumy cheese, and chips - with the occasional splash of kimchi for that extra bite), and the Brekkie Taco - Akram Lotfy’s proud creation, which consists of Egyptian sausage, fried eggs, salsa, and any and all greens available for the day.
However, when it comes to the rest of the menu, things aren’t set in stone…
“The beauty of this menu is that there’s no commitment on us nor the consumer,” Khamis tells us. “We post the menu on the day of the pop up, and so you know what you’re getting when you get it.”
The menu is seasonal by nature, permitting the duo to let their creative juices flow, a practice they could not find the time for in the stoic and preplanned atmosphere of professional settings.
Lotfy and Khamis found solace in the spontaneity and creativity of The Early Birds Club. "Most events held by people in the industry are dinner-oriented, and there’s this unspoken obligation that you have to be there for the full thing," Khamis explains. "That’s not something people want to adhere to every time they go out. With breakfast, there’s an opportunity for a low-commitment, come-and-go-as-you-please experience," Lotfy adds.
With four pop-ups under their belt thus far, Khamis and Lotfy continue to experiment. Collaborating with Brix, Cairo’s specialty mocktails provider, The Early Birds Club also offers a variety of seasonal brews, complementing the day’s menu.
“Time really flies when we’re doing a pop up, the day might end and we’d be stuck wondering how that happened so fast.” Lotfy shares. While their next pop-up is yet to be planned, Lotfy and Khamis tease “big things for the summer” as they continue to experiment with new recipes.
“We wear many hats and we wouldn’t take it any other way,” Lotfy says.
All said and done, we can’t help but wonder, do we have the same 24 hours in the day? Well, we’ll never know.
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