Ridley N.
Yelp
While I only give 3.25 stars, I do think it's great that Malek Egyptian cuisine exists. The plain fact that you can get koshary in Portland in and of itself is fantastic. I tend to feel a little differently than others about the options and admittedly prefer koshary absolutely doused in tomato sauce so take this with a grain of salt.
The entirety of koshary is present here - all the ingredients you expect including fresh lentils, fried onion, pasta, tomato sauce and vinegar are all here. I ordered mine with extra tomato sauce but I think my preferred style would probably need about 3-4 orders of the tomato sauce. For example, at Koshary Abou Tarek in Cairo, you can ladle an enormous amount of tomato sauce and fried onions onto your order. Does that possibly miss the point? Perhaps. Is it absolutely delicious that way? Yes. So part of this might be that I just need to get better at perfecting my order at Malek.
I also ordered the PDX Mac and cheese and that was somewhat disappointing. I added avocado and think it didn't add anything to the order. Sure, it was a fresh avocado half, but it just didn't really add any dimension. The organic cheese upgrade similarly felt unnecessary. That said, the sausage they serve is GREAT. I'd definitely splurge on extra sausage here.
Overall, admittedly with some partial user error, I had hoped for a more saucy dish with satisfying crunch from fried onions. It's still absolutely amazing that they are bringing koshary to Portland and that is reason alone to at least recommend a visit.