DESCRIPTIVE WRITING

Sumaiya Shakeel
Experience of a fast food restaurant

‘Mmmmmm’, ‘Aaaaahhhh’, such an aroma in the air. Even a mile or so away. This is true a mile in radius around Al-Baik. It is situated at the corner of Tahlia street, one of the busiest in Jeddah with huge supermarkets, renowned clothing stores, and restaurants along its length. For some reason, there is always a particular rush on the signal where Al-Baik is situated (and you cannot pass through their without hearing honks from cars trying to make their way thru before the light becomes red). It’s a difficult job to find a parking too. When you finally are walking up towards it, your mouth starts watering with images of its tasty chicken and that garlic sauce.. yummmmm!

Its one place where I’ve never seen its doors closed, be it any time of the day. There is no way the doors can close, the line is too long! You have to push through other people trying to get in line first. It is easier if a woman goes to purchase, Arabs know how to respect and usually deal with women thru the kitchen door connected from the street for deliveries. But the real experience goes like this: you just LOOSE It. It’s smell makes you take deep breaths and its hard to focus. The restaurant is roughly 30 by 30 feet. It is lit with fluorescent lights, no big advertisement or special deal posters hanging from its ceiling. The first thing you would notice is the crowd ofcourse. All packed in one small space like bees in their bee hive. Just heads of people from all aspects of life: poor, wealthy, the common, all packed in that one restaurant (leaving all restaurants in the area, including KFC and even McDonalds ro squat flies all day in their bored and empty restaurants) when you look at the counter, you see very fast speaking Sri Lankans taking orders a pace of maybe 10 costumers per minute. If you look a little above their heads, you would find the menu. It is not a fancy one full with delicious, mouth-watering pictures of food, but just simply lists. Every Jedanian knows exactly what he wants to order without even looking through the menu. They know it by heart. When it comes to your turn, you have are asked, ‘How may I help you ?’. To which 95% costumers answer, ‘one box with extra buns and lots of garlic sauce’. You purchase the Al-Baik (that is half chicken fried with fries, garlic sauce and 2 buns in the box) for the price of just SR.10 (equal to $2). Hardly anybody prefers to sit due to the long queues. So you get back to your car and enjoy the meal with your partner or whomever.