Cairo Cafe

Blaine's late-evening options have long been thin for anyone not drinking, and Cairo Cafe was opened in 2026 by a family aiming squarely at that gap: an Egyptian coffee and dessert house on County Road 10 that keeps bar hours without a bar. Its own site states the business is 100% halal, and there is no alcohol on the premises. What it sells instead is the Egyptian cafe format — long sittings, sweet things made to order, and a drinks board deep enough that a group can come back repeatedly without repeating an order. The kitchen's specialities are kunafa served in cups, Egyptian feteer, and sweet crepes; the coffee counter runs alongside them rather than behind them.

The drinks divide into five sections. Coffee and Qahwa covers Turkish coffee alongside the standard espresso builds — americano, cortado-style Spanish, white and dark mocha, caramel macchiato. Specialty Signatures is where the house work sits: pistachio, cookie butter, tiramisu and salted caramel cloud lattes, plus a brown sugar shaken espresso. The Tea and Chai section is the one worth reading closely, because it maps the neighbourhood's own communities as much as Egypt's: Adeni, a black tea with cardamom that comes out of Yemen; Cairo Tea, black tea with mint; Somali chai; regular chai; and karak. Refreshers and blended drinks run through hibiscus, tropical mango, mango dragonfruit, watermelon vimto, guava and lemon mint, and a matcha section covers French vanilla, mango, raspberry, strawberry, banana, lavender and coconut. Nothing on any of those lists contains alcohol. The value for a sober night out in the north metro is the closing time — 1am on Friday and Saturday, midnight on Sunday, 11pm the rest of the week — in a suburb where the alternative after ten is a chain bar or nothing. Two practical notes: the cafe is on County Road 10 rather than on Blaine's Central Avenue retail strip, and it opens at 9am, so it covers the whole day rather than only the evening. Because the entire operation is halal and unlicensed, there is no drinks list to scan for hidden alcohol — nothing on the premises contains any.