For decades, Michael Mina was known for his polished fine dining restaurants—Bourbon Steak, Stripsteak, and countless others—where luxury met restraint and precision was paramount. But his latest project is something far more personal: My Egypt, a cookbook that honors the flavors, memories, and techniques of his Egyptian heritage.

“I grew up in a hardcore Middle Eastern household,” says Mina. “The food was high in acid, high in spice, high in fat—and always balanced.” That early palate, shaped by his mother’s home cooking, would later inform Mina’s signature culinary philosophy: every dish must strike a careful chord between sweet, acid, heat, and richness. But for much of his professional life, Mina didn’t speak publicly about his background. “For the first 18 years of my life, I didn’t go by Michael,” he says. “I didn’t bring friends over for dinner. We weren’t serving spaghetti and hamburgers.”

My Egypt is Mina’s way of reclaiming and reintroducing that part of himself—on his own terms.

A Journey Back Home

Though Mina was born in Cairo, he spent his childhood in central Washington state. “We didn’t have the luxury of visiting Egypt often,” he says. “So when I finally went back as an adult, it was overwhelming.” Over the course of developing the book, Mina made six separate trips to Egypt, reconnecting not just with place, but with people—especially a local chef and culinary historian who became a vital guide through Egypt’s culinary past.

Together, they traveled through the country, researching dishes, meeting home cooks, and reimagining traditional preparations with a modern sensibility. The book is not about offering the definitive version of any one dish, Mina says. Instead, it’s about starting with a foundation and building something that reflects his life’s journey as a chef.

“Take ful medames,” he says. “It’s a dish I always asked my mom for, and it’s in the book. But every region in the Middle East has its own version. That’s what makes it beautiful.” Or koshari, the beloved Egyptian street food made with rice, lentils, chickpeas, caramelized onions, spicy tomato sauce, and a sharp pepper water. Mina’s take, featured in the book and at one of his restaurants, layers the classic flavors beneath a braised lamb shank, adding depth and dimension to a dish deeply rooted in nostalgia.

Craft and Memory

For Mina, the most powerful discoveries came not from flavor alone, but from technique. He recalls watching women in Egypt hand-pull feteer meshaltet dough into gossamer-thin sheets the size of a dining table. “It reminded me of laminated pastry,” he says. “It’s incredibly technical—and humbling to watch.”

That sense of reverence and curiosity animates every page of My Egypt, which blends foundational recipes with thoughtful adaptations designed for the modern kitchen. It’s not about reproducing his mother’s exact dishes, Mina says. It’s about honoring the spirit behind them while pushing their possibilities forward.

Even the act of writing the book became a form of personal restoration. “After I moved out of my parents’ house, I stopped speaking Arabic. I lost that connection for a while,” Mina says. “This was a way to bring it back.”

The Future of Egyptian Cuisine

While Mina has woven dishes from My Egypt into his restaurant menus—particularly at Orla—he’s hesitant to label any one concept as strictly Egyptian. “A lot of Egyptian food is street food,” he explains. “And while I love it, I’ve always wanted to show what happens when you take those flavors and apply technique, structure, and storytelling to them.”

Still, he sees a bright future for modern Egyptian cuisine—especially if it’s allowed to evolve, hybridize, and find its place within the broader Eastern Mediterranean context. “The region has so many crosscurrents,” he says. “Sicilian, Greek, Lebanese, Palestinian, Turkish—you see all of it in Egypt’s food. It tells the story of how many cultures have come through.”

Above all, Mina hopes readers will see My Egypt as an invitation: to explore new flavors, to rethink familiar ones, and to embrace the complex histories behind what we cook and eat.

“I just wanted to open people’s eyes,” he says. “To Egypt, to our food, to the idea that heritage can be both sacred and flexible.”