Riverside High has students from more than twenty countries, and their families speak fourteen different languages at home. When the student council planned the school's first Food Fair, its main goal was to show how the school community really was. Every club was invited to run a stall. To book one, each club paid a small of twenty pounds, which would be returned once its table had been cleaned at the end of the day. Renting the large kitchen in the town hall the school almost three hundred pounds, so the council also sold tickets to parents.
Mei, whose family comes from Vietnam, decided to cook her grandmother's recipe. Her grandmother had taught her to make rice-paper rolls, so thin and fragile that they tore if anyone handled them roughly. Meanwhile, the council argued over one new rule. It banned every dish containing nuts to protect pupils with allergies. The rule proved : half the parents praised it, while the other half complained that it ruined several traditional recipes.
A few students also worried that the judges would simply prefer familiar food. Ms Owen, the head of the council, promised there would be no against any dish because of the country it came from. Three judges would every dish on taste, presentation and the story behind it, using the same scoring sheet. Her clear explanation helped to the students' nerves, and the stalls opened on time.
The hall was crowded all afternoon. Some visitors tried so many samples that they had trouble them all, and one parent, a doctor, joked that they should rest before the desserts. At five o'clock, Ms Owen stepped onto a chair and Mei's stall the winner. Mei said the prize belonged to her grandmother.