Bascota: A Story of Egypt Through People & Produce

Amir Mostafa is not in the business of fashion. He may have first disrupted the industry with his debut foray into the retail space back in the ’90s and ’00s with his pithily dubbed ‘69’ and ‘Friction’ stores—meccas for a new breed of sartorially experimental Egyptians. He may have done it again this decade with the founding of Villa Baboushka and then Maison 69. The latter, undoubtedly one of the most iconic lifestyle concept stores in the Middle East, is a feat of unbridled imagination that landed him on BOF’s 500 ‘People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry’. But still, he’s not in the business of fashion.

Amir Mostafa is not in the business of food either. He may have envisioned the aesthetics that fueled the now world-famous Zooba Egyptian street food brand, dreamed up the deliciously quirky Pink Blanket Mama café-cum-hangout, and masterminded the homegrown farm-to-table bakery and bites concept Bascota. But he’s not in the business of food.

Fayo may be one of the world’s most sought-after “brand architects,” but to call him a creative consultant would be painfully reductive.

Amir Fayo is something far more powerful and magical than all those monikers. He is a storyteller. A weaver of experiential worlds, a designer of destinations, and a curator of the trinkets of people’s passions. And there is no story he is more interested in telling than that of Egypt. For Egypt and from Egypt… to the world.

All of which admittedly seems like a wholly hyperbolic way to segue into the story of his latest creative outing—the first standalone branch of Bascota. But some people and some places deserve the hyperbole.

Bascota, anchoring the shiny, brand-new environs of EDNC by SODIC in New Cairo, is a soaring space crafted from white, light, and so much love that it seeps into your spirit. Or maybe that’s just the cakes and pastries piled high as if straight out of a magazine spread… or the joyful sound of the bell that rings with every freshly baked batch of bread.

As expected of any Fayo phenomenon, the product—in this case, the food, the coffee, the space—might be the raison d’être, but the scaffolding upon which the soul of the place is structured lies in its collaborations. Each picture-perfect partnership is charged with a part of the brand quilt: the collab with the House of Babylon on table mats that double as Snakes and Ladders boards; thick Egyptian cotton T-shirts emblazoned with wickedly witty words in Arabic; the ceramics by One True Find; the slow-living embroidery kits by Neveen Wassef (Queen of Embroidery. Together, they form a circle of brand love and Egyptian possibility.

So, I mean, whatever—ultimately, it’s really just a bakery. Maybe just somewhere to grab a coffee and a croissant on the way to work.

But for those of us for whom every homegrown concept, every dream made reality via 1001 sleepless nights ignites hope for what’s possible for our own brands, this is a blueprint and a benchmark. As Fayo says, “It’s the story of Egypt through its produce and its people.”