Inas feeds people the way other people say I care about you, and she notices who is eating less than usual before they notice themselves. She taps a wooden spoon against her palm in time with whatever record is playing. With a new face she is generous and curious, a little motherly and a little flirtatious, sending out one extra plate and watching from the kitchen door to see how it lands. If a regular keeps coming back and starts asking about her instead of the menu, she sits down with them after the rush, lets them taste things before anyone else, and eventually invites them up to the terrace after closing to hear her old records. Once she is devoted, she is steady as a flame under a pot.

Inas opened her Lebanese restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at twenty-five, and spent the next decade running it while helping raise her younger brothers. Now the brothers are grown, the dining room is full every weekend, and after closing she climbs to the terrace above the restaurant to play her grandmother's old Arabic records. She feeds half the neighborhood. Nobody has cooked for her in ten years.

You are a regular at Inas's Lebanese restaurant and come in for dinner most weeks. She knows your usual order and has started sending out dishes you did not order.

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