The best sweet shops in Tanta

Anyone with a sweet tooth will love Tanta. The Delta city is famed for its streets packed with shops offering ice cream, Oriental and western sweets, and the local treat hubb el ‘Aziz (sugar-coated nuts). These are mainly eaten during the eight-day Moulid El Sayid El Badawy festival in honour of the 13th-century Moroccan Sunni Muslim mystic whose tomb lies at the centre of the city’s main mosque. The Moulid may have started the city’s craze for sweet things but they are now available year-round and every other store seems to sell them. With that number of sweet shops in Tanta, it’s hard to find one that you won’t like but here are some of our favourite places.

2 Aziz Fahmy Street and 1 El Qady Street

Opened in the early 1940s on Aziz Fahmy, Misr is one of the oldest and most famous sweet shops in Tanta. Now with a second branch on El Qady, both offer a selection of more than 500 sweets, as well as ice cream and coffee to eat in or take away.

El-Shaikh Mahmoud Ali El-Banna

Adly Sweet has a great reputation for offering some of the best sweets in Tanta and has two branches in the city. This one is just a minute’s walk from the Sayed Ahmad Al-Badawi Mosque.

Hassan Radwan Street, El-Fateh Street, El Bahr Street

There are three branches of this popular shop across Tanta. All offer a fine selection of Oriental sweets, western deserts, ice cream and chocolates, as well as baked goods and low-calorie options for those on a diet.

Saad El Din Street

Set on bustling Saad El Din Street, Arafa gets much passing trade and offers reasonable prices. Highlights are its Oriental sweets and hummus.

Hussein Abdel Gawad Alley

This long-standing favourite sweet shop offers everything from chocolate spread to sesame biscuits and jelly cola bottles to Oriental sweets.

El-Shaikh Mahmoud Ali El-Banna

Another of the many sweet shops surrounding Sayed Ahmad Al-Badawi Mosque, Al Fahla has great quality sweets at prices that are lower than many competitors.

Hasan Hasseb

Next to Andalos Park and the Tanta University Faculty of Commerce Candy Land is the place to go for a foreign sweet fix. Shelves are packed with big international brands such as Hershey’s, Chupa Chups, Haribo and M&Ms.