I saw a bowl of laksa get torn apart online last week. Not eaten. Judged.
Someone had posted a photo, the broth a little dull under bad lighting, and the comments filled up before anyone had tasted a single spoonful. Looks watery. Pass. Not worth the hype. Three lines, and a stall someone’s family had run for decades was written off by people who had never stood in front of it.
That stayed with me.
Because I’ve come to notice how quickly we decide things now. A dish lands on our feed, and in the time it takes to scroll past, we’ve already ruled. Too oily. Too plain. Too brown. We judge food the way we judge everything else online, fast, loud, and from a distance.
The problem is that a photo can’t hold the important parts. It can’t carry the smell of the wok, the warmth of the bowl in your hands, the way the auntie remembers your order. It flattens a meal into a single frame, and then we treat that frame like the whole truth.
I’ve been guilty of it too. I once skipped a stall for months because its photos looked unremarkable. Grey soup, a plain plate, nothing that would ever trend. When I finally sat down there, tired and hungry on a wet evening, the food quietly undid every assumption I’d made. I had judged it before I’d given it a chance.
That’s the thing social media rarely rewards. Patience. The willingness to taste before you speak. A plate that photographs poorly might be the one that stays with you for years, and a dish built for the camera can leave you feeling nothing at all.
We’ve started eating with our eyes wide open and our mouths shut, and I think we’ve lost something in that trade. Food was never meant to be consumed as content. It was meant to be eaten, slowly, in the company of people, in places that don’t always look good under a phone light.
I’m not saying photos are the enemy. I take them too. But I try to hold them loosely now, to remember that a picture is an invitation, not a verdict. The real judgment can only happen at the table.
So the next time a dish looks unremarkable on your screen, I’d gently ask you to pause before you scroll on. That dull broth might be someone’s whole life’s work. That plain plate might taste like a memory you didn’t know you were missing. You won’t know until you sit down.
Let the food speak before you do.
If this is the kind of honest, unhurried food talk you value, come sit with us a while over at SG Foodie Travels, where we’re always sharing more.
