Behind the scenes, the owner is busy preparing the orders of macaroons, which can’t wait, and preparing the menu for her new restaurant. “It’s a breakfast, farmers market concept that’s all day,” explains Mayada. The concept is rather new in the world of catering in Jeddah, full of fast food places and gourmet restaurants. In its draft menu, one can read dishes that could easily be found on the menus of Parisian or New York brunch places but with a local twist: avocado toast, edamame, parmesan and saffron shavings, beetroot and feta salad, seasoned with cumin… The drinks also feature Arabian hints: pistachio coffee frappé, lavender latte… In short, Black Cardamom intends to be in the era of time, whether it’s is through uts atmosphere or in the plates.

Restaurant Black Cardamom, a few days before its opening

It also intends to be eco-friendly. “We’re trying to get a lot of local farmers to get all the ingredients from them and grow certain ingredients we need,” says Mayada. The chef doesn’t want middlemen. She approaches her producers directly and wants to highlight them: “We’ll host a farmers market on Saturday or Friday, so consumers can actually talk with the farmers and see how it’s going and know which produces are seasonal, which ones are not, to get that conversation going.”

A stint at La Durée

This culture of “short circuit product” is uncommon among Saudi restaurateurs. It must be said that Mayada did not do her scales in the Kingdom. Born in Mecca, Chef Badr is one of the few Saudi chefs to have studied cuisine in France, alongside the greatest. However, nothing predestined this thirty-something woman to cook. “I studied design management in Barcelona School of Design and I worked in Dubai for a while in media buying and planning,” says Mayada. After three years in office, the Saudi woman started eating her heart out.

"I realized I wasn’t getting the job satisfaction I wanted. I wasn’t really producing anything with my hands. I was always going back home to bake something or cook something and bring it back with me and see the reaction on people’s faces. They were grateful, they liked it and I decided I wanted to open a restaurant."

Mayada Badr

She then left to France and Le Cordon Bleu school for a training course leading to a diploma in culinary arts and pastry, punctuated by internships in the kitchens of La Durée and La Bastide Saint-Antoine in Grasse. “It helped me a lot, says Mayada. It was a very humbling. You learn a lot. You do everything. You clean everything. It’s an amazing experience but it’s not an easy one. It was very challenging, but at the end of the day, you feel like you did something, like you didn’t just sit in an office and typed up something.”

Back home in Jeddah, Chef Badr opened a pastry shop – Pink Camel – and made the macaroon his signature product. A nod to France, would you say? Not really: “We found a gap in the market and it’s something I wanted to eat, on an almost daily basis.” Nevertheless, the Saudi woman has permanently installed the French almond snack cake in the local landscape. And it has not been an easy task.

"There was a lot of education that had to go about what’s a macaroon, and what’s this cookie and what it’s made of,” says Mayada. People couldn’t really say the name right. But now I feel like they do. A lot of people know the macarons now and were educated by it, but at the beginning it was: “Oh, the French cookie."

Mayada Badr

Since Pink Camel’s first macaroons, Mayada has come a long way. As a caterer, and catering consultant in particular. “We did a lot of government events and it put us more on the map. We also worked for the Royal Commission of Al-Ula in Le Louvres, Paris. It was a really nice gala dinner,” she recalls. These visits to the spotlight also had their share of frustrations. “When you’re Saudi chef and you’re coming from Saudi Arabia, which is not known for its cuisine, and you consult, go to France or Italy, and speak to these chefs that have worked there all their lives, they look at you and say:’What do you know? You are a Saudi chef. What are your credentials?’ They don’t know anything about Saudi cuisine. They don’t know our flavors,” she says. A lack of consideration that can sometimes border on disdain. “They always tell you: ‘Oh, we have some dishes, you can just sprinkle some cardamom or pistachios and it should be fine.’”

Chef Mayada Badr and former Saudi ambassador in Paris Khalid Al Ankary

Too little to make the woman, resolutely full of resources, waver, especially when it comes to making others discover her terroir.I tell them: “No, these are recipes and we’re going to do this and we’re going to change this and get some ingredients for that.’ Then I let them taste and you see how their facial expressions change like ‘Oh, this is different. Oh, I’ve never tried this. Oh this is nice.”

“Food is a language”

Chef Badr had to work hard to make a place for herself and Saudi Arabia in the world of gastronomy. And that’s no coincidence. Saudi cuisine and, by extension, Gulf cuisine, do not have a foothold in the West, even if they are not stingy in terms of unique flavours and techniques.

"It’s really hard to find some Saudi recipes and dishes that are properly documented. Each house has a different recipe and and trying to document this in the past was quite difficult. I feel like it’s something the government needs to work on, we need to document all the recipes all our traditions, why we were cooking this way, the different techniques we had."

Mayada Badr

While waiting to see Saudi cuisine shine , Mayada Badr continues her collaborations abroad, during dinners or worldly cocktails, by offering, at every opportunity, an insight into Saudi flavours. For her, food is undoubtedly the best ambassador of the kingdom. “Food is a language, she says. So it’s like sharing our language with them and showing them we have more ingredients and just rose and cardamom.”