The link between class and food has been addressed in the influential work of Pierre Bourdieu, which shows a strong relationship between economic and cultural forms of capital and the types of food consumed and tastes acquired over time. Drawing on feminist studies and theories of new materialism, this paper seeks to expand Bourdieu’s analysis of the relationship between food, class, and gender. It offers ethnographic data from a low-income neighborhood in Cairo to analyze differences between “the taste of necessity” and “the taste of [relative] freedom” (or luxury). Living within close spatial proximity, families who manage to accumulate more material and cultural capital than their neighbors flag their distinction by the foods they prepare and consume. While continuing to share with their neighbors a basic “preference” for salty, starchy, fatty, and sweet food, families who can afford to do so display their financial abilities and cultural knowledge through the quantities of food served, the frequency of cooking and consuming meat, the aesthetics of their presentation, and the offering of foods that are considered luxurious (like fruit and sweet treats). In this context, the abilities of women become key to the materialization of changes in their families economic and social standing. Women not only shop, prepare, cook, and serve food. They also tell stories about what they cook, reactions to the dishes they make for their families, the foods they consume at different places and for different occasions, and the many “social dramas” that are the cause and/or result of making and circulating foodstuff. Through their labor and words, women are able to materialize the standing of their families in the neighborhood and highlight their shifting status and distinction. By addressing such changes and narratives, the paper tackles important questions related to food and taste: Which aspects of our taste are open for change and which resist new ideas and products? Which tastes do we continue to remember even after many years of training in the consumption of a variety of new foods? Why are we able to forget certain foods but continue to crave others even when we know they are not good for us?