By Tony Min
To the table for one I keep coming back to,
You are never meant for me, and yet I keep finding you.
At Amoy Street Food Centre, you appear in small, passing moments. A seat just cleared, still slightly warm. A corner of a shared table where someone has just stood up, tray lifted, leaving behind a space that exists for only a few seconds before the next person notices.
Some days, that next person is me.
I used to hesitate before sitting down alone. There was always a brief pause, a small question of whether I should wait for someone, or eat somewhere quieter. A table for one felt like something temporary, as if I was just passing time until something more complete came along.
But that feeling did not last.
With a bowl of fish soup in front of me, I began to notice how little it mattered. Around me, the room moved at its own pace. Office workers leaning forward over quick lunches, conversations half-finished before the last spoonful. Someone calling out across tables, asking if a seat was taken. Someone else already halfway through their meal, eyes fixed on their phone.
No one looked twice.
The table did not ask for anything. It did not require conversation or attention. It held the meal, and that was enough.
Over time, I stopped thinking of it as eating alone.
The same feeling returns in a different way. The lights are softer, the pace slightly slower, but the rhythm remains. You sit, you eat, you listen. The sounds are still there, just stretched out. A satay stall calling out orders, the quiet clatter of plates being stacked, a low conversation that drifts without direction.
Even then, the table feels shared in a way that does not need words.
There is comfort in that. Not being known, but not being separate either. You exist within the space without needing to define your place in it. The table becomes part of the flow, and for a short while, so do you.
I have come to appreciate that.
There are meals that are meant to be shared, where conversation fills the gaps between bites. But others settle differently. Meals where the absence of conversation is not a lack, but a quiet space that allows everything else to be noticed.
The taste of the broth, the warmth of the bowl, the rhythm of the room around you.
When I finish, I do what everyone else does. I clear the tray, step away, and leave the table behind. Within seconds, someone else takes the seat. The same table, the same space, already part of another meal.
It does not belong to me.
But that has never been the point.
I keep coming back because I know it will be there, not waiting, but available. Not familiar in a personal way, but consistent in a way that matters more.
And each time, without needing to ask, it makes space for me again.
