Food Fights Revisited: Now, Egypt Aims for Biggest Plate of Koshary

Egypt, having no other problems to preoccupy it at the moment, is planning to break all records with an eight-ton dish of koshary;

The restaurateurs have invited a panel of judges from the Guinness Book of World Records to Egypt on November 22 to witness the creation of this record-breaking koshary dish.

According to the website of the Koshary and Egyptian Food Festival, the dish will be 10 meters wide, 1.2 meters high, and is estimated to weigh eight tons.

The signature Egyptian dish consists of pastas, rice, lentils, chickpeas and sauce and was traditionally a staple of street food carts, though now there are upmarket restaurants featuring it.

This follows a string of earlier efforts we've covered on this blog;

Back in 2009, Lebanon announced that it had broken the Guinness records for largest plates of hummus and tabbouleh, The following year the Israeli Arab town of Abu Ghosh fought back with a hummus that beat the Lebanese. In no time the Lebanese struck back with 10 tons of hummus. (It was getting a little silly; Haaretz had a headline referring to the "peas process.") (Video link here.)

10 tons of hummus

Hopes that food fights would replace actual wars were disappointed.The Arab uprisings seem to have abated the silliness for a time, but sure enough, in 2012 Jordan raised the stakes: a 74.75 kilogram falafel.

Egypt is late to the party but it has one thing going for it: I don't think these other countries know how to make koshary.