New Cairo Cafe Drip & Drown Does Drinks With Hardcore Discipline

Consistency isn’t a particularly glamorous idea; it doesn’t sparkle on Instagram, or announce itself with a neon sign, and it doesn’t come with a launch party or a limited-edition tote. And yet, in café culture, it’s the main difference between “cute” and “I’ll absolutely go there”.

Drip & Drown, a coffee, matcha, and burger spot in New Cairo, is built around that unflashy principle of consistency in quality. This place isn’t nostalgic or disruptive but simply exacting in all that it offers. “Consistency is something that’s often missing,” Ahmed Eltobgi, founder of Drip and Drown, tells SceneEats. “We don’t leave room for that.”

At a glance, the concept behind the place sounds like it might pull in too many directions at once. Coffee and matcha get the white-glove treatment, while the burgers occupy a more indulgent register. “Drip” refers to brewing, to coffee and matcha and “Drown” belongs to the burgers, layered with sauce and cheese.Matcha is handled carefully, with an understanding of how fragile it can be once opened. “It oxidises quickly,” El Tobgi says. “You have to treat it properly to keep its flavour.” They understand that a good matcha is a matcha that tastes vegetal and full, not muted or overly sweet. It has earned Drip & Drown a reputation online, particularly on TikTok, as a reference point for what good matcha in Egypt should taste like.

The coffee skews bold, with Colombian beans chosen for strength rather than subtlety with milk and sweetness present, but never taking over. “Coffee should still taste like coffee,” El Tobgi says.

The Matcha Strawberry Shortcake is the one drink that has made itself comfortable on the menu a while ago. It tastes the way its name suggests with strawberry up front, cake passing through, matcha staying put. It’s also the owner’s favourite drink.The café’s approach to new items is thorough, particularly with ideas that arrive unpredictably. Testing takes time. “We test hundreds of cups,” El Tobgi says. “Everything has to be balanced.” His background as a pharmacist shapes that process, even if he does not frame it as such; recipes at Drip and Drown are more like formulas.

Drip & Drown does not position itself as a neighbourhood hangout but more as a destination, a place people seek out specifically for certain drinks. That focus shows up in the details, from the way matcha foam is prepared to avoid collapsing into the cup mid drink, to the way baristas are trained to follow recipes exactly.

Looking ahead, the brand plans to expand into Tagamoa and Sheikh Zayed. New formats are also in the works, including a mini smashed burger concept called BUR, a coin-sized burger meant for sharing. Winter drinks are coming too, including Naked Matcha and Naked Latte with brown sugar and cookie butter flavours.