It’s hard to think of my ‘most’ memorable meal. I mean, we’ve eaten a lot in our lives and each meal has probably been unique in its own way. I don’t want to waste a lot of time juggling choices though, so for this prompt, I’m just going with the first meal that popped up in my head; I think that’s a pretty good indication for the meal being memorable. Most of my memories of this meal don’t even come from the food itself, but rather the experiences leading up to and during the meal.
We had this meal years back, when I was still in elementary or middle school. My family and I were in China during the summer to visit relatives. On this day, my parents had to spend the day doing boring adult stuff, but my older sister and I were left to have a free day. Our aunt and two of our cousins decided to take us out to eat at a hot pot buffet. The place wasn’t too far from where we were staying, so we decided to walk there. I don’t remember much about that walk, except two things. One, I learned from my cousins that they could somehow eat something like 4 Big Macs each in one sitting. Also, we got lost.
When we got to the buffet, it was a weird time between lunch and dinner. We were starving, but getting lost proved to actually help us because we showed up to a near empty restaurant and beat the lunchtime buzz. The buffet had an entrance fee so my aunt went up to pay for each of us. When she was paying for my fee, my aunt told the worker something and they had me stand up by the wall next to a sign that measured height. My sister whispered in my ear to crouch a little bit under the line on the measuring sign. I didn’t know what was going on so I went with it. Only afterwards did I realize that we lied about my height to get the child discount. I still don’t know how that worked, considering I was noticeably taller than the sign. Whatever the case, I ate free that day.
Now comes the actual meal: the hot pot buffet. If you don’t know what hot pot is, it's pretty simple. You’re given a hot pot of soup broth and you get different meats, vegetables, and foods that you dip and cook into the soup. It sounds pretty boring, but it’s great; if you’ve had Korean BBQ, it’s a similar experience. At this buffet, you could just pick out small platters of different cuts of meat or vegetables and bring them to your table. We were all really hungry, and combined with an empty buffet you already know we crushed that meal. Remember how my cousins could each eat 4 Big Macs? Just imagine how many platters they could go through. By the end of our meal we had two towers of empty platters that were both nearly the height of the table (when we put them on the ground). I didn’t eat as much as them, but I remember there was a slushy machine there that I went crazy for.
I still don’t really know why this meal is so memorable to me. It wasn’t an especially important occasion and the food was good, but not unforgettable. I guess if anything though, this meal goes to show just how important the people and places we visit are. Had it not been for the people I ate with, I probably wouldn’t have remembered this place at all.
