The legend on the menu

Some restaurants print a story on the back of the menu. A grandmother in a village, a recipe nobody was allowed to write down, a family that swore never to change a thing. Read a few of them and they begin to sound alike, because they are written for the same reader.

That is the advantage a story has over the truth. It can be adjusted. If diners love tradition, add a generation. If they love modesty, make the first shop smaller. Each draft gets closer to exactly what the reader hoped to hear, and so it is remembered and repeated far better than the real history, which was probably a loan, a rented kitchen and a lot of trial and error.

The dish cannot be adjusted that way. It arrives at a table in Mohandessin as whatever it is. Too much salt is too much salt, whatever the menu says about grandmother. Fresh bread is fresh, even if nobody wrote a word about it.

Polished stories travel. They get shared, quoted, photographed, retold at the next table. Next to them the plain fact of a good meal looks quiet, almost unmarketable.

But the plate has no interest in the legend. It does not need anyone to believe in it. It simply keeps being what it is, every evening, for everyone who orders it, long after the story on the back of the menu has been rewritten again.

That is the quiet strength of the real thing. It is there tomorrow, unchanged, whether or not anyone was persuaded.