The food at Egyptian Pizza is, on the whole, quite delicious and the pricing reasonable. Although I have been a patron of the restaurant for a long time, I still find myself sometimes liking and sometimes questioning the thematic décor, which can be overdone in some instances and cheap in others.
Case in point: You may find yourself sitting on a hard-cushioned chair and staring via mirror-lined walls at dimly lit Egyptian ruins (molded plaster pillars and randomly placed red brick). Some find this appealing; most likely, you will simply forget your surroundings after a few minutes of acclimation. The plastic chairs and matching marble-patterned tables are highly reminiscent of a beachside sandwich shop or inexpensive café of the late 1980s, but since Egyptian Pizza can deliver its slightly sweet, very moist pita bread pizzas and halal Middle Eastern entrées to your front door, this will probably not be an issue for the average undergraduate student living within its delivery area, which includes the Homewood Campus.
That's right, they deliver! I highly recommend that you give them a call one night when you are tired of the same five or 10 dinner options in the area. In the past, I have found their delivery service a bit slow, but certainly no worse than that of other area delivery joints. Compared to your normal nightly options, the food will certainly be higher in quality and quite different in taste.
Still, even if delivery is very tempting, I encourage you to take a shuttle ride (or befriend and coerce someone with a car or Hopkins van privileges) so that you can enjoy more freshly-cooked food and "get out" for one evening. A great many Baltimore residents will have heard of Belvedere Square, which houses not only Egyptian Pizza, but numerous other restaurants, four or so bars (including two wine bars), a gourmet bakery and soup bar, a bookstore and several cafés.
Having grown up in Baltimore, I can assure you that this is a relatively safe area surrounded by middle class and upper middle class neighborhoods.
You may have heard of a historical landmark, the Senator Theater, which is a block away from the square. You will find this all a block south of the intersection of Northern Parkway and York Road. The latter street changes its name to Greenmount Avenue as you head south towards Homewood Campus, but do not worry; Belvedere Square is much safer than the Greenmount Avenue with which undergraduates may be familiar. As a note, you will find free parking if you do take the time to have a sit-down dinner at Egyptian Pizza as two friends and I decided to do.
I generally have found the wait staff at Egyptian Pizza to be highly polite and somewhat attentive, though their energies typically seemed sapped by the end of the day and they do not take in visitors too excitedly. Tonight, though a slower weeknight, was no exception. Regardless, you will likely be received by a host within a minute of walking in the door and tonight we were given a choice of tables at which to sit.
Our waiter was very patient when we took extra time to order, and was generally visible and available for please-refill-my-drink hand-flailings.
She also tried very diligently to be hospitable and mildly talkative, though it looked as though she had just pulled an all-nighter for a Organic Chemistry exam (maybe I've been at Hopkins too long when I read that much into someone's looking tired).As for the food, it was as good as always tonight. Sometimes when you get delivery, the homemade hummus or baba ganush appetizer dips seem less fresh (though the oven baked pita is sealed in a plastic bag where it remains as delicious and moist as ever).
The food is never bad, and was in fact on the fresher side tonight, helped by the fact of our choosing to dine in. In the past I have gotten highly satisfying Middle Eastern dishes here (though they give you a bit too much "Middle Eastern salad" and merely a reasonable amount of the main dish).
Tonight I again had the baba ganush, which I consider to probably be among the best tasting in all of Baltimore. Their hummus is equally fresh and flavorful. If you like grape leaves, you will find theirs to be of the drier variety, not drenched in olive oil like those available at University Minimart on Saint Paul.
My friends had a burger with both regular and curly fries and the "Egyptian" equivalent of a pepperoni pizza - and they let me to try all of these items.
The regular French fries are somewhat pathetic (very thinly cut and too bland tasting), but the curly fries consistently come out with the perfect, classic curly fry flavor and are cut slightly thicker. The burger was not the best burger of my life, but was definitely satiating and not disagreeable at all. The moist patty was placed on a slightly grilled bun and is surely a great backup for any dinner companion who does not like adventuring into new food territory.
As the restaurant keeps to an Islamic dietary code, the pepperoni contains no pork, and as beef is much more to my taste, I found my friend's pepperoni pizza delicious. The pepperoni was salty rather than overly oily.
While in the past I have greatly enjoyed their uniquely flavored "India Chicken" and "Middle Eastern Lamb" based pizzas, tonight I ordered vegetarian. I got an old favorite, the "Astoria" pizza, with black olives, marinated and freshly grilled eggplant, and feta cheese.
The crust of all their pizzas is similar to oven-warm, moist pita bread in fluffiness and taste. While their tomato sauce is slightly sweet, it is balanced by a moist and surely fattening layer of utterly delectable cheese, whether it is a mixture of mozzarella and feta, or fontina. The eggplant has come out so-so occasionally, but tonight it was perfect. Finally, the olives were not the shriveled cheap ones a chain restaurant uses, but apparently fresher, likely hand-chopped black olives.
A perfectly filling personal 10-inch pizza is about $9-10 and the care put into that one pizza's cooking will be well worth it.If you have room for dessert, I would recommend trying their Baklava, which I have enjoyed in the past. Tonight I ordered chocolate ganache raspberry cake. Though it was presented picturesquely and was fairly delicious, it had a nonetheless store-bought, prepackaged taste. I would not waste your appetite on this in a restaurant that has so many other unique, freshly made, savory and sweet options.
