The waiter set it down and I said thank you like I meant it.
A pistachio latte at Alchemist in Tras Street, that pale green colour everyone posts, the flavour I have never once actually craved. I ordered it because it was there, because it was what you order now, because saying “just a black coffee” felt like admitting I hadn’t kept up.
I drank half of it. I don’t even like pistachio.
That’s the thing I keep catching myself doing. Ordering the dish that photographs well over the one I actually want. Nodding along when someone says the burnt cheesecake changed their life. Agreeing that yes, the matcha here is different, when it tastes like every other matcha I’ve had.
Somewhere along the way, eating stopped being about what I wanted and became about what I was supposed to want.
I notice it most when I’m with people I’m trying to impress, or people I don’t know well yet. I’ll scan the menu and quietly rule out the thing that sounds comforting, because it isn’t the thing. I’ll order the croffle, the cruffin, the whatever-they’ve-crossed-with-a-croissant, and I’ll say it’s good even when it’s just fine.
It’s a small dishonesty. But it adds up.
Because when I sit with it, I realise how many meals I’ve spent performing enjoyment instead of feeling it. How often I’ve let a trend decide my order. There’s a version of me that would rather look like I have taste than admit I just wanted the kaya toast.
Last week I was at Lucali BYGB in Dempsey, and someone passed around a burrata that everyone made noises over. I made the noises too. Then I quietly kept eating the plain bread on the side, which was the part I actually liked, and hoped nobody noticed.
That was the moment it landed for me.
I’ve been eating to be seen eating. Not for hunger, not for pleasure, but for the small approval of ordering the right thing. And the strange part is that nobody asked me to. No one is checking. The pressure was always mine, built out of some quiet fear of being the person with unremarkable taste.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. You can watch it happen at any table. The way we reach for what’s trending, the way we describe it in words we borrowed from someone else. We’ve turned appetite into a kind of audition.
The food I remember, though, was never the food I posted. It was the meals I ate when nobody was watching. The instant noodles at midnight. The plain half-boiled eggs. The things I liked before I learned to like the right things.
I finished the pistachio latte out of politeness to no one.
These days I’m trying to order slower. To ask myself what I actually want before I ask what I’m supposed to.
It’s harder than it sounds. But I’d like to taste my own life again, instead of everyone else’s.