A Table Set for All: Ode to the Favorite That Never Was #poetry

What is your favorite restaurant?

The question is simple,
"What is your favorite restaurant?"
And I laugh,
because you — yes, you —
you asked it with such seriousness,
like we were picking gods from a celestial menu.

He used to eat with his elbows on the table,
in dim-lit diners where ketchup came in bottles
already half-squeezed by a thousand other dreamers.
He claimed the best meals weren’t served;
they were confessed.
Flavors whispered secrets in the middle of bite two.
That was his kind of place.
Unfussy. Real.
The smell of old oil and young ambition.

You,
you want to know what I prefer.
You, with your curated questions and polished fork.
But you wouldn’t survive my kind of restaurant.
My favorite has no name.
It moves.
It breathes in contradictions.
Its roof sometimes leaks philosophy onto your plate.

Here, I’ll try.

Course One: Memory Amuse-Bouche

I remember
a corner in a crumbling alleyway in Old Delhi,
where lentils stewed like love letters
and rotis puffed up with laughter.
A child ran by, chasing a marble,
and the vendor didn't stop stirring.
Was that a restaurant?
It had no chairs, no menu,
but I swear the mustard oil remembered my name.
That could be the one.
Could have been.

But then, I also loved
that Korean hole-in-the-wall near the bus station in São Paulo —
do you remember it?
No, of course not.
You were in another body then,
possibly mine.

Course Two: The Entrée

You walk in, thinking
this will be simple —
choose a dish, find a table,
smile politely at strangers.
But no.

At my favorite restaurant,
you seat yourself
next to a saxophonist eating silence.
The waiter speaks in haiku:
"Three spoons of memory /
Laced with turmeric despair /
Will you drink or leave?"

And you —
you, brave and bewildered,
ask for the chef.
But the kitchen has no walls,
and the chef is an old woman in you
who once fed your grandmother pickled stories.

The menu?
A chalkboard filled with erased intentions.
You order something called “the taste of nearly,”
and it arrives cold.
Still, it makes your eyes water
in all the right places.

Course Three: Garnish of Chaos

She thought about restaurants differently.
Not as places.
But as moments dressed in edible costume.

She once said,
"A favorite restaurant is where
your mouth remembers what your heart forgot."

So when she found herself in a train canteen,
spilling coffee over a stranger’s poetry,
and the samosa burned her lip
just as his eyes softened,
she marked the spot —
not in ink,
but in the way her breath paused
whenever someone mentioned cumin.

He followed recipes like scripture.
Needed precision,
measured spoonfuls of security.
But then —
then came that evening in Morocco,
a pop-up stall near the ocean,
where he tasted unwashed parsley
and chaos cooked in ghee.
It undid him,
stitch by stitch.

Course Four: A Dialogue of Palates

—I don’t know where to eat tonight.
—Why not eat where your tongue first lied?
—That would be my uncle’s biryani place.
—Then that’s the one.
—But it’s not a restaurant.
—All food is served somewhere. The place doesn’t matter.
—But the Michelin guide—
—Doesn’t understand hunger.
—Fair. But is nostalgia a cuisine?
—Only if you chew slow.

Course Five: Dessert That Eats Back

Imagine this:
a chocolate mousse that tells your future.
You scoop it up,
and it says,
"You’ll never have a favorite."

Because how could you?
When your childhood was seasoned with scarcity,
your adolescence sautéed in longing,
and your adult years boiled over
with too many options?

Every place you sat felt temporary.
Every bite, a promise made and broken.
Every bill, a small betrayal
for pretending to be full
when you were starving
for something that no menu could serve.

So, your favorite restaurant isn’t one place.
It’s a constellation of forks.
A collage of chewing
in past, present, and imagined futures.

Course Six: The Reflection Served Hot

I’ve eaten at places
where chandeliers spoke French,
and at benches
where pigeons interrupted my idli-sambar.

You want an answer.

So here.
Take this.

My favorite restaurant is the one
where the food tastes like silence after shouting.
Where the water tastes like forgiveness.
Where the server remembers your grief
but never mentions it.

It is the one
where you eat slowly,
with both hands,
because one hand
is busy holding the memory
of someone who once cooked for you
when no one else would.

Digestif: The Invitation

And now,
you.

Yes, you again.
Tell me —
What was the last meal that held your gaze
longer than any lover ever did?

Go back there.
Smell the garlic in your pillow.
Taste the chili behind your eyelids.
Go.

Find it.

Not for me.
Not for him, or her, or them.

But for you.

Because that —
that right there,
that is your favorite restaurant.

#Poetry #FoodForThought #FavoriteRestaurant #PoetryOfMemory #SpokenWord #TasteOfNostalgia #CulinaryJourney