WHEN WE EAT Brings Globally Renowned Chefs to Ramla in Ras El Hekma

CairoScene

01-07-2025

WHEN WE EAT Brings Globally Renowned Chefs to Ramla in Ras El Hekma
By early evening, the tide has already begun to pull back from the limestone shore at Ras El Hekma. Salt gathers on the surface of the rock pools, and the wind shifts direction. Just behind Ramla's beach restaurant, someone is lighting the day's fire - olive wood and citrus branches from a nearby grove. The smoke comes first, then the scent: slightly bitter, dry, unmistakably coastal. This is the beginning of WHEN WE EAT at Ramla - a summer dinner series staged across four weeks, from July 15th to August 15th, hosted on Egypt's Mediterranean coast in partnership with MARAKEZ.
The open-air restaurant sits steps from the sea, tucked into the walkable centre of Ramla - MARAKEZ's 400-acre coastal community designed to epitomise slow living. Over the season, the kitchen is turned over to a lineup of world-class chefs for a series of three-night takeovers, each one shaped by fire, fresh catch, and the summer produce that flourishes along this stretch of the Mediterranean.
Mads Refslund
First to arrive is Mads Refslund, chef of ILIS in New York and co-founder of NOMA, bringing with him a method rooted in foraging and flame. He's followed by Kelvin Cheung, of Jun's in Dubai- ranked No.7 on MENA's 50 Best Restaurants 2025 - known for his inventive takes on diasporic Indian-Chinese flavours filtered through a regional lens. Then comes Brando Moros, of 11 Woodfire, the Michelin-starred restaurant ranked No.28 in the same list, whose dishes are built around char and the clarity of a single ingredient exposed to heat.
"This is a 'WHEN WE EAT Signature Dinner' series but, they're not just dinners. They're a celebration of community and a preservation of our Egyptian coastal way of life," Hoda El-Sherif, co-founder of Flavor Republic, tells Scene Eats. Each dinner is a tribute to the small-scale fishermen working our Mediterranean coast from Alexandria to Matruh - the back bones of this delicate ecosystem who persevere tirelessly to protect it. With Marakez, we're setting the tone for the future of conscious destination experiences."
The ingredients come from nearby: sea bream and mullet caught that morning, eggplants blistered over open flame, tomatoes ripened in Matrouh's dry sun, and wild herbs picked before noon to avoid wilting. Everything is prepped in the open - guests can see the stations, the coolers, the butcher's twine, the clatter of prep just audible over the waves. The dining setup is elemental: driftwood tables, linen runners weighted with salt jars, seating arranged around the fire so close you feel the heat on your knees.
The project reflects the broader mission of WHEN WE EAT, the storytelling platform developed by Flavor Republic, the food-focused studio co-founded by Hoda El-Sherif and Sherif Tamim in 2014. What began as an attempt to style food with the same care given to fashion and interiors became the region's first agency dedicated to food and its cultural footprint. From that grew WHEN WE EAT, and from it, Cairo Food Week - a ten-day culinary encounter launched in 2023 that brought over 20 celebrated international chefs to Egypt to cook across context: from the Grand Egyptian Museum and the foot of the Pyramids to city markets and farms along the desert fringe.
Ramla offers a quieter stage. Its buildings are grounded in limestone, its piazzas open to wind, and its lagoon - a centrepiece of the project - shifts colour as the sun descends. 'Food has always been a gateway to culture and connection - and at Ramla, we see it as central to the experience we're building. We're partnering with WHEN WE EAT to bring world-class culinary talent to Egypt's North Coast while staying rooted in local identity. These dinners will gather people together around good food, meaningful stories, and a deep sense of place - that's what Ramla is all about,' Ashraf Maklad, Chief Commercial Officer MARAKEZ, tells Scene Eats.
Alex Atala
The season's final supper takes place on August 15th, when Alex Atala - chef of D.O.M. in São Paulo (2 Michelin stars) - prepares a one-night-only multi-sensory dinner beside Ramla's tidal pools. Atala's work draws on the depth and biodiversity of the Amazon, which he threads into each course with a kind of cartographic awareness. At Ramla, he'll explore the tension and kinship between two ecosystems: the lush, river-fed terrain of northern Brazil and the saline, mineral-rich coastline of the Egyptian Mediterranean.
Tickets will be available soon.