Elaine’s Restaurant

At Old Town restaurant Elaine’s, Cynthia Higgins aims to bring “Alexandria to Alexandria.” Higgins and her family hail from the Egyptian city of Alexandria located right on the Mediterranean, where the local food is influenced by a melting pot of Greek, Italian, French, Israeli, and African cuisine. “It’s very healthy, but very flavorful as well,” Higgins says. “Alexandrian Egyptian cuisine is particularly special because it is a fusion between many Mediterranean flavors.”

Elaine’s menu spans dishes like ancient Egyptian lava bean dip with crispy chickpeas, moussaka with beef, or steak shish kabobs with sumac onions. Higgins’ personal favorite is her personal recipe, the blackened cod served with herbed Israeli couscous, sun-dried tomatoes and a roasted garlic and cauliflower puree.

Higgins opened the restaurant with her husband, Jeffery, back in 2023. It’s the fulfilment of a promise she made back when she was 12 years old to her grandmother, Elaine, that she would one day own a restaurant and name it after her. “I honestly wanted to see her name on a building,” Higgins says.

“She was a fabulous cook. She was the first female investor in the Egyptian Stock Exchange in 1950. She was brilliant. And she was a huge philanthropist, she was generous to a fault. Before she died, she gave away all her fortune. She died without one cent of her name. It’s a massive example to live up to.”

Higgins loved cooking with her grandmother, but she embarked on an entirely different career path that eventually brought her to Washington, D.C., working in counter-terrorism. “I needed the benevolence of food and wine and smiling faces, because as you can imagine, there aren’t too many smiles in my other career.”

Today, step into the building that dates back to the 1880s, and you’ll always hear Frank Sinatra songs on Elaine’s playlist. “It’s part of the culture of old Egypt,” Higgins explains. “My grandmother had a huge crush on Frank Sinatra, and her house always smelled like delicious food.” Higgins is often in the kitchen, inspecting every last morsel on the plate. The inviting bar is decorated with the names of regulars. The restaurant also doubles as a literary salon, with its own fabulous library dining room stacked with books as a nod to her husband’s career as an author.

“We have hundreds of books displayed at Elaine’s, and initially my thought was to get some of the books out of our house,” Higgins joked. But after that dining room served as a venue for a friend’s book launch, the restaurant developed its own literary program including events like author talks, book launches, and writer clubs. Elaine’s even hosts its own podcast and book fair.

For Higgins, running Elaine’s restaurant is both her childhood dream and her American dream come true. “I am absolutely in love with America,” she says. “I’m a first-generation immigrant, I am overwhelmed with the generosity and the kindness of the American people. I have not faced anything but kindness and generosity. That’s a very unique thing. Only in America. There are no strangers in America. And that is the treatment I have received and the love and the hospitality from the community is something I will forever be thankful for.”

Visit Elaine’s located at 208 Queen Street Alexandria, Virginia