Moustafa built all of this — the food and the room.
Mombar is the work of one man. Moustafa El Sayed left Alexandria, the old sea port in northern Egypt, and for about twenty-five years he has run this place on Steinway Street single-handed: chef, host, server, and the artist who mosaicked every wall and table by hand.
“Part magpie’s nest, and part decades-long art installation.”
Step inside and you feel like you’re in someone’s quirky home — because you are. Found objects plaster the mosaicked surfaces: a New York license plate, a marble fireplace, fencing masks, statuettes, old tin advertisements, and eyes of Horus everywhere, all melded into one sculptural whole. Nothing was bought as a set. He gathered it, tile by tile, object by object, over years.
Alexandria, and a light in the dark
The room glows the amber of an old lamp — the color, Moustafa likes to think, of his home port and its ancient lighthouse, the Pharos, that once threw its light across the sea. That warmth is the whole mood of the place: dark, jewel-lit, unhurried.
And there’s no menu
He cooks what’s fresh and tells you at the table. “Order whatever he recommends and has on hand,” the critics say — and they’re right. The food is Alexandrian home cooking: tagines, couscous, the livers, the quail, the mombar. When the handwritten bill comes it’s reasonable, usually under a hundred dollars for two. Bring cash. Bring a bottle.
“Twenty-five years, and I’m still adding to it.” — Moustafa