Good night, Mr Hamburger

Tarek Atia opens up the sesame-seed bun and wonders: where's the fuul?
photo: Ahmed Abdel-Raziq
Not a bit worried by the new trend; McFelafel; Shaaban Abdel-Rehim
"Aristocratic" felafel is nothing new. Five-star hotels in Cairo have been serving the stuff for years, probably just as amazed as you are that there are enough chumps out there willing to pay 10 times something's street value for the prestige of eating it in a tiled garden.
Then again, when you've been brought up in a certain way, street food embodies danger. The ta'miya from the cart on the corner may be the carrier of some horrendous disease -- and getting it with salad only ups the ante. So you opt to go safe most of the time, either at the one or two clean places that you can depend on, or (in a pinch) at the Hilton.
Suddenly, McDonald's has become another viable option for the cautious felafel connoisseur. With the introduction of McFelafel, the global hamburger giant is squeezing its way deeper into the Egyptian psyche. "Try my ta'miya," beckon its golden arches, "I'm one of you now."
"What, you want baladi bread?" asked the incredulous cashier at McDonald's Merghani branch, when a customer commented that the sandwich was good, but that "we aren't used to felafel in a Kaiser."
McFelafel, the cashier explained, is "better than the regular. It's felafel -- but it's more aristocratic felafel."
At that moment, a middle- aged man came up to the counter and ordered 10 McFelafels. "Let's hope to God they're good," he said, almost unable to let go of his 20.
"They're not all for me," he explained. "They're for the family."
These days, you get a lot of this -- people trying out the new offering en masse in offices, as a family, on picnics. At these gatherings, you can bet that at some point, someone will ask, "Why is it so spicy?"
Soon enough, everyone discovers that that's the tehina talking, part of the set of toppings that go on the McFelafel patty.
Youssef Abdel-Ghani, the assistant managing director at McDonald's Egypt, boasts that the felafel itself is a "home recipe." Abdel-Ghani adds: "The beauty of the felafel is that it fit perfectly in the McDonald's sandwich assembly system."
Abdel-Ghani and top management at McDonald's know that the current rush to try McFelafel does not necessarily indicate that the sandwich's popularity will last. When it comes to ideas of expanding McFelafel to other markets, though, such as Europe and the United States, Abdel-Ghani conforms to the maxim that succeeding in your home market is priority number one.
A giant ad campaign has been rolled out. Inserts in the papers, radio and TV ads -- these last two a source of unwanted controversy -- have successfully created a buzz around the sandwich.
So why not McFuul, for instance, or McKoshari?
"We're open, we're investigating our options," Abdel-Ghani says.
Ever since McDonald's opened in Egypt in 1994, they had been thinking of introducing a "local sandwich with a local taste."
But how many will end up like the family of four who decided to give it a try, and ended up competing for the best description of how awful the experience was. "Sour... raw... too thick... too dense... doesn't have the fluffy ta'miya stuffing... and it's too expensive..."
Even those who don't hate it, who merely try it once, shrug, and then opt not to pay so much more than the local version again, are a lost market share.
When you think about it, at LE1.50, McFelafel costs about a third of a burger. The combo -- with fries and a drink -- goes for LE3. That's sure to inspire a few more sales.
There are different theories as to who McDonald's is targeting with its new offering. Is it the mass market, or niches like the teenagers who are already its clientele, but who sometimes don't have enough cash in their pockets to get more than a soda? Maybe if felafel are so accessible, everyone will pitch in and share some fries as well.
The felafel flipper at Shabrawi in Heliopolis is not worried about the competition, in any case. In fact, he is so cool about McFelafel that he pretends not to have even heard about it. Although he is busy mashing the felafel mix in front of him into perfect patties with one hand and tossing them into their bath of boiling oil with the other, he presents me with a well-considered comment. "They won't be able to do it. It's not their business."
Even at Shabrawi, however, gone are the days of hectic dining experiences -- in the wild, so to speak. What used to be an eight- seat restaurant with some tables out front is now more of a take out joint, with a sandwich counter just like -- that's right, Mickey D's.
Still, Shabrawi is the king of felafel. Patrons are known to have come from the distant reaches of Cairo for 4.00am doses of perfect, piping hot ta'miya heaven -- the ta'miya of your dreams. And while Shabrawi may not be consistent, McDonald's is never sublime.
There was talk a few years ago of a famous Egyptian businessman deciding to open a chain of McDonald's-like fast-food fuul and ta'miya restaurants, with the same uniform, sanitised look and feel of classic American fast food. It never happened, but the logic behind the idea was that people would be willing to pay a little more for their favourite baladi meal in a predictable format they could trust, no matter where they were. Is McDonald's striving for that feeling with McFelafel? Perhaps -- for while some may lament the fact that everything's being sanitised, the local ta'miya guy probably wants to look like McDonald's.
After all, people pay more for water if it's shiny and clean and comes in a plastic bottle. The same dynamic is at the heart of the McFelafel dream.
In Egypt, the chain's reputation is a far cry from the greasy spoon aura the original now exudes on its home turf, the USA. Here a family meal at "Mac" is a special treat, a symbol of status, the shiny beacon of progress, and the epitome of modernity.
It is the other side of that reputation -- as the banal globality of McEverything -- that helped the fast-food giant take a PR battering in the last year. Especially in Europe, it is seen as lowering public standards and usurping local markets, and is openly called "trash food" by activists.
"McDonald's is an easy target for anyone who wants to criticise globalisation. Every time McDonald's tries to do something, it is accused of having an agenda for global hegemony." But, Abdel-Ghani says, "most of the 45 million customers in 28,000 restaurants worldwide every day don't think of McDonald's as this evil target. We're a network of local entrepreneurs."
Those entrepreneurs were the hardest hit financially when McDonald's Egypt and many other firms associated with the US suffered as a result of popular sentiment turning against US products after the Intifada began last September.
It was ironic, then, when one of the Intifada's most vocal supporters, singer Shaaban "I Hate Israel" Abdel-Rehim, turned up singing the TV and radio jingles for McFelafel. How could Shaaban -- who sings "I'd refuse foreign wool but wear my country's burlap" -- be advertising McDonald's: was he plugging his country's burlap, packaged in foreign wool? Anything for money, you might say, but he claims he was tricked -- that he knew he'd be singing for ta'miya, but not for an American company. "Just look at my latest album," Shaaban protests. Called "Amrika ya Amrika," its title song is a baladi chant urging the US to re- think its foreign policy, and convince its bosom buddy Israel to make peace with the region.
"I Hate Israel," the Shaaban hit heard around the world, has been credited with much more than just fanning the flames of Arab public opinion. Last week, the American Jewish Congress complained to the McDonald's US head office that an Israel- hater shouldn't be employed by an American company. Perhaps by coincidence, McDonald's pulled the ad soon thereafter.
The global socio-political implications of McFelafel know no bounds, however. Pundits are wondering whether this is just a practice run for the introduction of McFelafel worldwide. Is Egypt the test market for what may become the latest global fast-food phenomenon?
Exporting McFelafel is possible, "once we fine-tune it," Abdel-Ghani admits. And why shouldn't McFelafel become the next Big Mac? Served by homegrown Arab restaurants around the world, felafel is already globally popular. Here, too, there is another twist: at many restaurants around the world, felafel is claimed as an authentic Israeli dish. As that debate rages on, the McDonald's version -- like a tepid US-brokered peace deal -- could stealthily become the standard: no frills, same everywhere, generic felafel taste.
As the world becomes smaller and weirder, the same debates are taking place everywhere. Yet Abdel-Ghani denies the move into felafel has anything to do with financial woes, or the market's growing fear of mad cow disease. For McDonald's it just "falls in line with the strategy." That means that in India the Maharaja burger is made of lamb, and the menu features potato- and curry-based dishes. The Japanese eat corn soup and Teriyaki burgers under their golden arches.
"We are not competing against the local ta'miya guy," Abdel-Ghani says. "Beef is still our focus."
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