The plates were good. I can’t tell you much about them.

We were four, crowded around a table at Wild Honey in Mandarin Gallery, working through eggs benedict and the kind of Saturday brunch spread you order when nobody wants to make a decision. I remember the room was bright and a little busy.

But if you asked me to describe the taste in detail, I’d have to make something up.

What I remember is Wei laughing so hard she had to put down her fork. The way an old argument got settled without anyone meaning to settle it. The long pause after someone said something honest, and how nobody rushed to fill it.

The food was the reason we came. It wasn’t the reason we stayed.
I’ve started noticing this more. How the meals that stick aren’t always the ones with the best cooking.

Some of the finest things I’ve eaten, I ate alone, and they’ve faded. Some of the most ordinary meals, a plate of cai fan on a plastic tray, are fixed in me because of who sat across the table.

We talk about food like it’s the point. We rank it, photograph it, argue over where to go. But so much of what we remember has little to do with the plate. It’s the company.

The particular mix of people who happened to be there, and the version of ourselves we became in front of them.

I think the food is often just the excuse. A reason to hold people in one place long enough for something real to happen. You order, you wait, you pass things around, and in the gaps between all of that, the actual meal takes place. Not on the table. Around it.

Last month I met an old friend at Apollo Coffee Bar in Serangoon, a place I’d been meaning to try for its Breakfast Burger, the one everyone seems to mention. I ordered it. I barely noticed eating it.

We hadn’t spoken properly in two years, and the whole time we were catching up, the plate sat there doing its job, which was simply to give us somewhere to sit.

I couldn’t tell you if it was good. I could tell you everything he said.

That’s the part I keep landing on. We spend so much effort choosing where to eat, and the choice matters less than we think.

A brilliant meal with the wrong people stays cold. A plain one with the right people stays warm for years.

I still care about food. I always will. But I’ve stopped believing the plate is the thing.

The next time a meal stays with me, I already know it won’t be because of what was on it.

It’ll be because of who was there when it arrived.