A green dessert

Saturday, and the dessert menus are still green.

Every National Day the last page of the menu turns. A special appears for the week, and the special is the tell. Look at whether it is a colour or a dish.

The visiting restaurant dyes something. Green cheesecake. A green latte. A cupcake with a flag on a stick, the same cupcake it sells in every city it operates in, in whichever colour that city's day happens to be. The kitchen did not change. The food colouring did.

The restaurant that belongs reaches for the table instead. Dates from Qassim or Al Ahsa, because a Saudi table starts with dates. Saudi coffee, pale and heavy with cardamom, poured for the room. Kleija from Qassim, masoub in Jeddah, a plate of luqaimat for the children, something the grandmother at the table recognises and has an opinion about. The colour, if it appears at all, is on the receipt.

Both restaurants post the same green square, so the difference never shows in the marketing. It shows when the plate arrives, and the family notices everything. The grandmother knows within one bite whether the kitchen knows the dish or looked it up. The child does not care about the flag on the stick and will remember the luqaimat. The father who chose the place is being judged on it by the whole table, quietly, and he will not choose it twice if the tell went the wrong way.

I check for this every September. It costs nothing and it tells you who did the work before the week began.

Identity on a menu is ingredients, not food colouring, and the family at the table can taste the difference.