Revisiting something from your past reminds you of how time sweeps by so fast and you’re nothing but a little older, perhaps a little wiser, but more so a little sadder because of those very things. That’s nostalgia for you. On the bright side, suchlike wistfulness gives you something to smile at. The good things happened, and thankfully, they now exist in some form of memory.
I experienced these bittersweet emotions when I returned to The Ship, a restaurant in the corner of Bukit Bintang, on a date night. In living up to its name, the steakhouse characteristically resembled a real-life vessel. Ship paintings, jute ropes and red-and-white buoys lined the wooden walls. The bartenders and waiters were all dressed in sailor suits, complete with ranking badges and navy caps. Even the chairs were crafted to appear like the classic ship wheel.
You see, I used to frequent here with my family when I was a child. We didn’t exactly dine at this joint— the restaurant has many flagships across the valley. The Ship touts itself for making the best steaks in the city; in all truthfulness, those meats had always tasted divine. We ate out almost every night but whenever somebody craved for steaks or anything Western, we’d head to The Ship. Any Ship would do.
Each time we dined in, my sister would have her usual fish and chips (which was always left half-uneaten at the end of the night) while my parents had steaks. I’d order a steaming bowl of onion soup for starters and a tall glass of milkshake to seal the deal. I also used to have what was known as the oriental chicken from the menu.
For years, I didn’t order anything else but that. There would be a huge slab of chicken breast in the middle of the plate like an island with its surrounding moat of sweet-and-sour gravy. I remember the chicken being moist and tasty. The tartness of the tomatoes was just right. To my younger self, that’s how any oriental chicken in the world’s supposed to taste like.
The four of us would talk about everything underneath the sun, from school to whatever zeitgeist that us kids were into those days. My parents loved listening to us talking. We loved listening to their laughter.
For some reason, no matter how many trips we made to the nautical eatery, I’d always remember the time when we celebrated New Year’s Eve there. I was sixteen, and like any teenager, I had written about my meal in my diary. I also remember it clearly because we took photographs of our night in the restaurant. I still have a photograph of my dad and I at the time. We appeared so alike that nobody could possibly tell us apart if I hadn’t worn black lipstick and thick bangs.
I listened to a lot of The Cure and Echo and the Bunnymen at the time so when The Ship played trendy tracks on the stereo, I was miffed beyond belief. Their rotating playlist included the saccharine ballads of Celine Dion, some slow tunes from the Backstreet Boys, a Bryan Adams song— you get the idea. Were sailors supposed to listen to this to cure their seasickness? I thought. Blasphemous!
More than a decade later on a Saturday night, N and I looked through the menu at the very same place. I immediately checked up on my usual order but guess what? The oriental chicken was nowhere to be seen. It seemed to have been zapped from the surface of the earth, almost as if it never existed in the first place.
Dismayed, I ordered the Russian chicken instead. I vaguely remember having it once before but I thought I might give the memory of taste a kick. N decided on a simple spring chicken dish. The birds on our plate tasted heavenly. The vodka-infused beschamel sauce was excellent with white meat and the spring chicken was fried crispy. Before long, our plates were empty.
While finishing our milkshakes, I told N about my previous dine-ins at The Ship. In the background, the same Celine Dion song drifted from the stereo. It felt like the nineties again except I was no longer wearing black lipstick (and instead of documenting my meal into a diary, I’m writing about it on this blog). It’s amazing to be there at the moment, all grown-up yet surrounded by the ghosts of my distant past. Those happy nights my family and I had are now a part of the stories the walls of The Ship had witnessed. It’s pretty comforting, especially when you're moving on to a brand new life. When you need to close a chapter, you need to have closure. That night, I had mine.
