Your story continues….

By scanning the QR code, you’ve stepped a little deeper into our tale. Tonight’s dinner isn’t just a menu. It was the first chapter of a three-month story, woven from ancient love, Persian poetry, and the quiet magic of gathering around a table at Laili.

You have crossed from the flavors on your plate into the narrative that inspired them. This page is the continuation — the soft thread between your dinner and Layla & Majnun, the timeless love story that helped shape Laili’s very heartbeat.

So settle in….Let the evening slow down a little more.
Let this be a gentle continuation of your “Story Menu.”

A Brief History of Layla & Majnun

For centuries, this story has lived at the center of Persian and Middle Eastern culture.

Originally a 7th-century Bedouin love legend, the tale of Layla and Qays (who later becomes known as “Majnun,” meaning possessed or mad with love) was passed down as oral poetry long before it became literature.

Its most famous written form came in 1188 CE, when the great Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi transformed the legend into an epic poem as part of his celebrated Khamsa (“Quintet”). Nizami’s version elevated the story from folklore to high art — a sweeping meditation on love, longing, devotion, and the spiritual journey of the heart.

Across time, Layla & Majnun have shaped everything from Sufi philosophy to Ottoman miniature painting to modern Middle Eastern music. It is often described as the Persian “Romeo & Juliet,” though in truth, Shakespeare’s lovers are the imitators — not the originals. Where Western love stories dwell on loss, Layla & Majnun celebrate love as a transformative force. Love as awakening. Love is something that outgrows the world that contains it.

In Persian culture, the names Layla and Majnun have become shorthand for a love so powerful it reshapes the soul — a devotion that exists whether or not the lovers are allowed to be together.

This is the story that lives at the heart of Laili’s cuisine, design, and spirit — the story you stepped into tonight….

A recap from our last dinner together……

Last month, we opened with a spark—the kind of moment where two people see each other once and everything shifts. That was Layla and Majnun, hearts recognizing something so true that the world rushed to pull them apart. November lived in that beginning: the bright awakening, the first pull before the obstacles arrived.

This is the season where love learns to stretch across distance—Majnun wandering the desert with her name on his breath, Layla sending out whatever small signals she can from behind closed walls. Their devotion becomes a language of fragments: gestures instead of touch, symbols instead of speech.

But in the fuller telling of their story, this distance isn’t just physical—it’s cultural, familial, and emotional. Two young lovers caught in the gravitational pull of their time. Their only weapon? A stubborn tenderness that refuses to wither. Majnun writes her name on stones so the wind might carry it. Layla hides verses inside woven cloth. Every message is a risk. Every silence is a wound.

And yet, somehow, their connection survives. It moves through metaphor, through memory, through whatever vessels are available. It becomes a kind of spiritual endurance—love stripped down to intention.

And that’s exactly where our December menu picks up the story.

Each dish carries that quiet reaching—subtle, intentional, built on the idea that connection can travel even when people cannot. The ingredients echo the world of the poem: humble foods that have crossed deserts and generations, dishes that know something about patience and preservation. This month’s flavors move like their messages do: small, meaningful, heartfelt.

A table where connection still finds a way through,
even when the world insists on keeping everything else apart.

 

THE DECEMBER STORY MENU

Course 1: The First Signal

MEDITERRANEAN PLATE  

Hummus, tabbouleh, baba ganoush, cucumber yogurt 

 

Course 2: Majnun’s Desert Prayer 

ARUGULA PESTO PASTA 

house-made fettuccine in cream sauce with sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts, walnuts (add chicken or grilled prawns) 

There’s a moment in Layla & Majnun when the story shifts from longing to resourcefulness — when each lover must find new ways to send meaning through the narrow cracks the world still allows. No more stolen glances; no more shared air. Instead, their love begins moving through symbols disguised as the everyday. A sprig of herbs wrapped into a cloth. A pattern traced into bread dough. A mark on a vessel delivered by a hand that claims to know nothing.

These weren’t grand gestures.
They were ordinary things carrying extraordinary weight —
intention disguised as daily life.

This pasta course lives in that chapter.

Arugula pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, kalamata olives, artichoke hearts — ingredients that each carry a lineage of preservation, patience, and meaning. Foods that withstand time. Foods that survive distance. Foods that have always been used to signal hospitality, acceptance, remembrance.

Just as Layla tucked verses into woven cloth, this dish tucks flavor into layers: brightness inside cream, depth inside salt, tenderness inside heat. A bowl that feels familiar from a distance, but reveals its heart only when you sit with it.

It’s a dish built like their love —
not loud, not lavish, but layered with intention.

A reminder that connection doesn’t always arrive as fireworks; sometimes it arrives as warmth in a bowl, shared between two people trying to say the things the world won’t let them say out loud.

Course 3: Reunion In Imagination 

PISTACHIO BAKLAVA

hand-layered, house-made, pistachio

As Layla & Majnun moves deeper into its story, the distance between them hardens, but the sweetness doesn’t disappear — it just becomes more internal. Majnun holds entire worlds of tenderness inside his chest. Layla guards her love like a hidden flame, letting it burn quietly rather than risk losing it altogether.

This is the part of the tale where longing takes on a softer shape.
Not desperate — devotional.
Not loud — enduring.

And in so many cultures touched by this story, the desserts carry that symbolism: sweetness wrapped in patience, joy earned through painstaking layers, care revealed only when you take the time to reach the heart of it.

Which is exactly what baklava is.

A Sweetness Made of Layers, Like Their Devotion….

Hand-layered baklava is an act of time, detail, and care — delicate sheets built one atop another until they form something strong, golden, and fragrant. A dessert that looks simple from afar but reveals its craftsmanship only when you lean in.

This course honors the layered nature of their love: hidden, protected, unfolding slowly.

A reminder that sweetness doesn’t vanish under pressure; it just waits, held together by intention.

December: The Season of Distance, Devotion & Quiet Signals

If November was indeed the spark — that first electric moment when Layla and Majnun saw one another and something in both of them shifted forever — then December is the echo that follows. It’s the part of the tale where the world tightens around them, where glances become memories and memories become longing. The love is still young, still bright, still unmistakably alive… it’s just learning to move through different channels now.

In Nizami’s telling, this is where affection becomes endurance.

Majnun is not yet the wild desert wanderer he will become, but he is unmistakably changed — awake in a way that frightens the people around him. Layla, meanwhile, moves through her world with a quiet fire of her own, sending what signals she can through the narrow openings society allows. Their connection doesn’t disappear; it adapts. It shifts into fragments, symbols, coded messages that only the two of them understand.

This month’s menu sits right inside that emotional terrain.

Each dish is intentionally built to echo this chapter of the story:
ingredients that travel distance, flavors layered with meaning, offerings rooted in the idea that connection can still find a way through even when people cannot. These are foods that speak softly but with purpose — the culinary equivalent of a whispered poem or a gesture slipped through a doorway.

December is where the love deepens.
Where longing becomes language.
Where devotion becomes its own form of courage.

And just as their story turns toward a more profound, more vulnerable stretch, our series does too.

Because January is the moment we’ve been heading toward —
the final table in this three-part journey, where everything Layla and Majnun have held, hoped, and survived comes into focus. A menu shaped by reunion, reckoning, and the truths that rise when love has endured every obstacle placed in its path.

Reserve your place for December —
and stay with us as we walk toward the closing chapter of their tale in January.