It feels so long ago since the day we decided to have lunch at Nam Nam in Raffles City.
That was a time when the lights of the mall were completely on, when the restaurants were running at full capacity, where we had to queue (no social distancing) to get a seat in this place and where the place was packed with the lunchtime crowd having their meal.
The scene is different now.
A few weeks ago I happened to be back at the same mall and, well, let's just say that the mall was dimmer, the place was quieter, and lights from open restaurants and cafes became a little like beacons of light.
Nam Nam was closed.
Or at least it appeared to be.
And that makes this meal at Nam Nam in Raffles City a bit of a memory.
It isn't the meal alone that makes the memory. Rather, it is the experience of dining there, and the freedom of being able to simply queue up and drop in for a meal.
We can have beef pho anywhere, anytime, delivery or takeaway. We can even have the lunch set as we did on this day- one big bowl of very soft, tender beef slices served with pho plus an addition of beef, a serving of glutinuous rice rolls stuffed full with vegetables, and a mug of iced Vietnamese coffee.
But whereever we have our meal at, we won't have the right lighting, we won't have the correct stools, the correct height of tables, the same crockery, the same cutlery, and we probably won't be able to plate our meals the same way they do.