Why You Feel You Haven't Eaten Anything After a Wedding Banquet

The small plate in front of me holds exactly three slices of cold boiled chicken and one sprig of coriander. A waiter has just carried another plate away and set a bowl of soup down in its place. On the stage, the MC is calling the bride's relatives up for a photo. I pick up my chopsticks, put them down, pick them up again. Which dishes have already come and gone? I cannot remember.

At ten that night I walk into the house and Hà asks whether the banquet was good. I am standing in the middle of the kitchen with the fridge open, looking for a packet of instant noodles. The true answer is only one: I don't know.

This is not because I am greedy, and it is not because the chef cooked badly. I am also not about to tell you to sit quietly chewing every bite while the speakers blare. At a table of ten, that is the fastest way to become the most annoying person there. I only want to talk about a few small gaps where a banquet still lets you taste one dish properly.

When do you eat, between the speakers and the stories that never end?

Table twelve, a pale pink tablecloth, ten people around one lazy Susan. The lotus-stem salad has barely landed when Uncle Quân, beside me, piles a full scoop into my bowl and asks about the new branch. I chew, nod, answer, laugh. When I swallow, I am still laughing. The next dish arrives, a glass of soda clinks against a glass of soda, the speakers crackle into a song everyone knows.

At that table there is almost no moment when I only eat. My mouth is chewing at table twelve, while the rest of me is on the stage, or in Uncle Quân's story, or in the envelope still sitting in my jacket pocket.

— Eat, eat, this chef is famous.

— Mm, delicious.

I say "delicious" before the salad has reached my tongue. The word slips out like a greeting, not a verdict.

Something I noticed only recently: people invite you to eat with words, but tasting you have to claim for yourself. Nobody can claim it for you. And you do not need to claim much, only a few seconds that already sit between two other things. When a new plate has just landed and the person beside you is still serving. When someone has just finished a question and you do not yet have to answer.

A wedding banquet has its own beat, set by the music, the MC, the people carrying plates. That beat waits for nobody. But between beats there is always a gap the length of one breath, and a breath is something you already have.

One day I overdid it. I closed my eyes, weighed every flavour, and completely missed an aunt across the table telling me about her niece getting into the selective tenth-grade class. She had to ask twice. That day I took one thing from it: if I have to choose between listening to a story and tasting a piece of chicken, I choose the story. There will be another dish, but the story will not be told the same way a second time.

You ate, so why does it feel as if you didn't?

Ten at night, our kitchen. The pot of water is crackling, the packet of noodles already open on the counter. Hà sits next to me with a boiled egg, watching.

— You didn't eat at the banquet?

— Of course I did.

— What did you eat?

I open my mouth, then close it. The lotus-stem salad, definitely. Everything else is a stripe of brown, yellow and red running through my head.

I tend to mix up two things: having eaten enough and having eaten. A full stomach may mean enough, while memory may have kept nothing at all. People often call the feeling of not having eaten after a banquet a craving, or a meal that "didn't satisfy". I suspect it is closer to something else: I never really met a single dish, so I never got to say goodbye to one.

What I have been trying lately is very small. Before leaving home, I promise myself one dish, only one, that I want to remember from tonight. At the table I watch to see whether it comes out. If it does not, I choose another one right then, rather than lose the whole evening to waiting.

In the car on the way home, I try to name three dishes quietly to myself, with one detail for each. The chicken with a dusting of pepper. The crab soup a little salty. The lotus-seed dessert still warm. Some nights I get three, some nights only one. One is enough to keep the evening from slipping by blank.

That feeling of something passing without staying is not unique to weddings. This site has an article about a Thursday lunch when someone forgot who they had eaten with: Thursday. I forgot who I ate lunch with.

If you try a few times and the banquet still slips by

There are two reasons I run into most often. The first is that the table is too loud, so loud that every sentence has to be nearly shouted, and a person who is shouting finds it hard to taste anything. When that happens I give up early, gently, and take another part of the evening: watching the faces of the bride and groom at the cake cutting, listening to people laugh. Not every banquet needs to be tasted. Some need to be watched.

The second reason: my head is somewhere else. I am worried about running into an ex, about an envelope that is too thin, about getting home late. Then the plate in front of me is only an excuse to keep my hands busy. I do not force it. I just name what is taking up the room, "ah, I am worrying about the envelope", and come back to the bite in my hand. Sometimes I manage to come back, sometimes not.

If you want to practise somewhere quieter, a table at home is much easier than a banquet table. There is Smell Before You Eat, which takes one second, and Eating a Meal Without Your Phone for meals that are calm enough.

Next time, between the speakers and the spinning tray, I will let my chopsticks rest for exactly one beat. That is all.

This article was created with AI assistance.