Keep Calm and Chafa On

Food Review #1

Thin strands of hair punctuate my sentences as I talk of my friends to my mother while our knees touch inside the rickshaw. Momentarily, we are speechless as the sweet, pure scent of chafa, clutched by a street vendor, interrupts the perpetual odour of sewage. It is only destiny, then, that the café we were headed to would also be called Chafa Café and Studio.

Hunger swirled manically inside of me, drawing into its current all sense of judgement and leaving an "I can order literally anything right now and still like it enough to devour it" feeling as residue. My willful hunger gnawed at my insides as I flipped through the impossibly vast menu. Initial decisions of ordering chic salads and soup dissolved entirely as rationality took over.

We landed on Mixed Vegetarian Risotto with Sun-dried Tomato and Vegetarian Vietnamese Rolls, accompanied by orange and watermelon cold-presses. 

The raw carrot, tofu, and another unrecognisable leafy vegetable did disappointingly nothing to aid my starving stomach. The creamy, luscious risotto, on the other hand, reminded me that I, in fact, am that girl in making food choices. All active thought evaporated as I bit into crunchy zucchini while rice and tomato melted around my tongue. Side note, the fruit juices, with their comically large slices perched on the glasses' rims, appeared ravishingly health-conscious to the eye. To me, it was sweet, sugary paradise.

By the end of it, my mother and I were hunched over the piles of food inside us, stomachs grossly inflated. It is but nearly impossible to deny dessert, though.

I decided on affogato against my mother's suggestion of chocolate panna cotta. Our eyes glazed over as the waiter dressed in neon green placed a gorgeous platter on our table, espresso and vanilla ice cream dichotomised by a long, diplomatic stick of biscotti.