A visual feast

But wait. Look at it. Just look at it. No, I know you’re starving, but that’s an actual plate. China, actually. Pristine clean. And the silverware, laid out like a resolved calculus equation.

The napkin. How do they fold it like that, so it it stands up like a sentry, protecting the valuable cargo next to it?

​Then there’s the food. Ahhh, smells so good. Fresh. Right from the pan to this plate — no plastic or cardboard container transition. And they didn’t just throw it on the plate like me turning over the take-out container and plopping it on my plate. No, they shaped it — a beautiful, colorful circular pyramid, like a three-dimensional pinwheel.

​And look at the colors: they glisten! Let me just take this in. And I’m sitting down, across from a friend who’s doing the same thing. Quite a change from being hunched over my apartment counter watching YouTube videos of parkour guys kissing poles as they do headers on stairs.

​I’m just taking in this experience, INSIDE A RESTAURANT. An experience I used to take for granted. With a beautifully prepared meal I’m enjoying with my eyes before my nose and mouth even introduce themselves. Before the pandemic — before we started hoarding meals in the corners of our homes like mice with crumbs — who even gave a shit about meal presentation and ambience? But now? It’s a visual feast.

​Of course, the best is still to come. The primal, and somewhat carnal, pleasure of devouring this exotic bounty. But for just this moment, the visual feast is enough.