The marinade is not the reason

There is a family grill in Khobar where every regular will tell you the reason they come is the marinade.

The owner, the story goes, will not say what is in it. Friends have tried to make it at home. Some have come close. None of them stopped going.

Because the marinade is not why they come. Sit by the window for half an hour and watch. The man at the grill greets families by the name of their district. He knows which table wants the bread warm and which wants it crisp, without being told. The children get their plates first. The chicken comes off the coals and goes straight to the table, still hissing, carried by the person who cooked it.

All of that happens in the open. Any guest can see it, and every guest does, even the ones who would describe the evening as being about the marinade.

People who run things love a secret. It is flattering to believe that what keeps guests returning is hidden in a back room, a formula a rival could steal, something to guard. It makes the work sound like a vault rather than a set of manners.

The hidden part rarely matters as much as the people guarding it think. The part that brings someone back is the part they watched you do.