I had lunch with a church friend today and we went to that chap fun place around the corner – the one with tons of customers on most days because it is a cheapish place with okay food. For under 8 bucks (7.80) you get plain or fried rice or a choice of fried noodles (bee hoon or kway teow) and 2 dishes. They heap the lot onto a large flat dish, plonk a fork and spoon next to it, and away you go. The problem with this place, apart from gradually salting yourself to death, is the quantity – makes you dozy after. Sort of like a banana leaf event in KL.

A bunch of ex-colleagues in KL used to have a weekly ritual of gorging ourselves on similarly sized servings of rice and curries, served on fresh banana leafs. It’s a thali except it potentially has an unholy quantity of meats.

When you arrive in a thali restaurant and you have found a seat, a large piece of clean and fresh banana leaf is placed in front of you. You are then asked what you wanted with your thali (which is basically an unlimited quantity of steamed rice with 3-4 varieties of overcooked vegetables, condiments like chutneys and pickles and curries). One typically chooses from a variety of chicken, fish (or seafood but woe betide your pocket if you chose seafood other than fish) or lamb. No beef or pork is served. I usually go for fried fish which like the vegetable, tend to be over-cooked but thanks to the spices used, remain very delicious.

I sometimes go overboard and choose a fish and a chicken and when that happens, one thing leads to another and before you knew it, you’ve eaten too much of everything. But more of that later.

Once you have ordered your meat (or fish), the busboys come in rapid succession. The first comes with a bucket of rice and heaps diabetes inducing quantity of steamed white rice on your piece of banana leaf. He generally doesn’t stop till you ask him to. He is incredulous if you make him stop before a manly quantity is attained but gives you a dirty look if you don’t stop him after he thinks you’ve gone past being manly and have crossed to being a pig. About 2 seconds after he is done someone else comes with a bucket caddy filled with usually overcooked vegetables. You’re expected to have a lot less of these than the rice but in my case, I usually have more of these. This compounds my problems as these busboys think my unmanly behaviour suggested by the quantity of rice requested is affirmed by the large quantities of vegetables asked for.

I usually correct this misperception by the curries I asked for. When the busboys with yet another set of buckets arrive, I go to town and ask for dhal, fish curry, chicken curry, coconut chutney, tomato chutney and the tongue busting sambals on top of it all. Sometimes they have the pickled whole little green chillies and I always wanted those too. Lots of them.

The problem with having too much curries is you invariably end up with heaps of rice to go with the curries. Hence it is always a gut busting exercise – you constantly upped one part of the meal to balance another. The ritual finishes with a cup of tea, presumably to expedite the settling and digestive process. Actually it only adds to the bulk of matter sitting in the guts. By the time we track back to the office, 2 things happen. The first is that you have a hangover-like effect with a bloated sense and the second is, because you ate a banana leaf with your bare (usually right) hand, you have curry-smelling fingers for the rest of the day. Actually an obvious third thing happens – you invariably lose interest in your work for at least the first hour after lunch.

After each sleep-inducing heavy meal, I think of those banana leaf rice lunches. What indulgence, what sheer joy of indulgence.