JEDDAH: Local foodies can assure you that the Western Region of Saudi Arabia is home to delicious seafood; especially the fish that’s fried after being dry rubbed with cumin and “garam malasa” and served on a bed of cardamom-infused rice. Mmmmm, delicious! But if a men and women decide to go together to one of the popular fish restaurants clustered around rest houses along the road to Madinah north of the city, restaurant owners there are checking to ensure couples are related by blood or marriage. According to yesterday’s Asharq Al-Awsat, any mixed groups (men and women, together) that enter their restaurants without children in tow would be carded, asked to produce a Saudi family ID card to prove their relationship to each other. Now, some of you might be thinking that this is a move by the country’s religious authorities, but in fact this is just good old fashioned moral and cultural self-regulation, the restaurant owners said. One of them explained to the paper that the move was to “preserve the good reputation” of these area rest houses.
