The best fish is on a plastic chair

In Jeddah, the argument about who grills fish best never ends, and it should not. Some people are simply better at it. They choose the fish early, they understand the fire, they take it off a minute before anyone else would. The result is plainly better, and people drive across the city for it.

Seeking that out is not snobbery. It is respect for the work. When the meal matters, a birthday, a guest from abroad, a parent who has not been well, you want whoever does it best, and you are right to.

Elitism is a different thing wearing similar clothes. It is the diner who will not try a place because the chairs are plastic and the menu is a laminated sheet. The friend who only counts restaurants with a doorman and a waiting list. The yearly roundup of best tables drawn from the same few districts every time. None of it tastes the fish. It reads the label around the fish, and lets that label settle whose cooking counts at all.

There is a quieter version too. The person who genuinely knows grills, and is right about them, starts to assume that makes them right about bread, about tea, about how everyone else ought to eat.

The honest way to eat well in this city is to keep the standard and drop the filter. Judge the plate. Go where the plate is good, including places you would never have chosen to be seen in. That is how you find the cook nobody has ranked yet.

Caring about the best is not the problem. Deciding beforehand where the best is permitted to come from is.