Egyptian authorities briefly detained US vlogger for filming food reviews in Cairo

Popular YouTuber Will Sonbuchner was detained and interrogated by Egyptian authorities in late January for trying to film reviews of local food on the streets of Cairo, despite holding a permit, the food vlogger revealed this week.

The star of the "Best Ever Food Review Show", which has over eight million subscribers and 1.5 trillion total views, revealed in his latest video released on Thursday that he was detained at Cairo International Airport for four hours.

Sonbuchner said he and his crew were held and had their filming equipment confiscated, revealing the details in the most recent episode filmed from Egypt and entitled "Don't Come Here!", which has already been watched 2.5 million times.

The American vlogger said after their release, his team managed to capture footage in downtown Cairo on their iPhones.

"Egypt's slogan should be 'leave your camera at home, but bring your money'. They don’t want you to shoot here," Sonbuchner said at the start of the episode. 

"I have nothing against the people of Egypt, I just think in a country that makes 12 percent of its GDP from tourism, the police, the authorities and those who run this place might want to stop treating their tourists like spies and criminals," he later added.

The vlogger did not speak to any Egyptians during the filming of the episode, but said: "A lot of this episode is just me finding out what Egyptian food even is."

During the episode, Sonbuchner tried popular Egyptian street foods Egyptian, including the country's national dish Koshary, falafel and Hawashi.

Egyptian viewers of the show poured out their sympathy for the vlogger for facing such an unfriendly welcome from security services. 

"Thanks for showing the real face of the Egyptian authorities. How they treated you is just a surface of how they treat their own people! Enforced disappearances, mass executions, mass arrests and more," said one comment under the YouTube video.

"As Egyptians, we live in conditions that are 10 times worse than that, so I hope you try to [make people] aware of our situation," another comment said.