Little Lexie's New Series Builds Italian Menus From Egyptian Farms 

Little Lexie’s - an Italian restaurant in Swan Lake - is introducing From The Source, a monthly culinary series that celebrates a different local Egyptian ingredient with every iteration. In the premiere edition, Executive Chef Vito Pugliese picked figs from the Bedouin orchards of Marsa Matrouh, and developed a menu around them back in Cairo.

“When I joined Little Lexie’s, we started asking ourselves a simple question: Why are we always looking abroad when Egypt has such incredible ingredients?” Chef Pugliese shared. “That’s how From The Source was born. We wanted to celebrate Egyptian produce in its own season, travel to where it’s grown, meet the people behind it, and bring those stories back to the restaurant.”

For Chef Pugliese and the Little Lexie’s team, From The Source is about giving farmers and the produce they tend to the recognition they deserve. August is fig season, so it was the perfect ingredient to start with. They chose the Sultani Fig, which is the traditional fig of Marsa Matrouh. Chef Pugliese called it “One of Egypt’s most treasured local products.”“What makes it so special is that it’s naturally rain-fed,” he explained. “The orchards depend mainly on winter rainwater that’s collected and stored in the valleys rather than intensive irrigation, which gives the fruit an incredible natural sweetness and a very concentrated flavour.”

But more than the figs, what stayed with Chef Pugliese was the relationship he developed with a Bedouin family from Ezbet Welad El Aktaa who have been growing the orchards for generations.

“Their knowledge, patience and respect for the land are inspiring, and I wanted our guests to taste that story as much as the fruit itself,” he said.

When he brought the figs back to Cairo, he crafted an Italian menu around them. For food, the Bruschetta, Tagliata Di Manzo and Fig Panna Cotta, and for drinks, the N/Ten Fig Sour - a signature Tanqueray No. TEN cocktail - and the Fig Leaf Highball mocktail.

“It's all about taking a single ingredient, like figs, and applying different techniques to get distinct outcomes,” Chef Pugliese said. The techniques included reducing, drying and making a chutney or coulis. “For example, oven-baking caramelises the natural sugars and creates a much richer, more intense flavour.”

By placing local farmers and Egyptian produce at the centre of the menu, Chef Pugliese is hoping to inspire a movement “toward sustainable, locally sourced dining across the industry."

In the upcoming chapters of From The Source, Little Lexie’s will be making trips across the country to olive, sesame, pomegranate, date and mango farms, when each piece of produce is at the height of its season.

“Egypt has incredibly diverse soils and climates and every region grows something exceptional,” Chef Pugliese said. “That’s what makes this project so exciting.”

And with each new ingredient, they will ask themselves: “How can we tell this story through Italian food?”