Do you remember that scene in The Menu (2022) when Chef Slowik prepared a normal cheeseburger with genuine passion after years of serving fancy-looking dishes to pretentious audiences? That made me want a cheeseburger. So bad. So after months of forgetting that craving, last Sunday I suddenly remembered it and decided to go to McDonald’s with my boyfriend for dinner.

We had been eating out at different restaurants that weekend. So we decided, why not just go to a McDonald’s. Simple and cheap. The night before, we were at this Japanese restaurant called Chotto-Motto with our friends. The place was creatively decorated in a modern-retro Japanese pop culture aesthetic, and the food was an interesting fusion of Japanese and other cuisines. It was great and definitely a more interesting experience than eating at a fast-food chain. But somehow, this Sunday, that McDonald’s cheeseburger became the best meal I’ve had in a long time.

As I was eating the cheeseburger, I was reminded of that time when I was a kid when I kept asking my mom whether I could have a birthday party at McDonald’s, even when she said no multiple times and tried to explain our financial difficulties. I remember how McDonald’s was a fancy meal for us, and I could only gulp and imagine the juiciness of a cheeseburger patty on my tastebuds.

Fast forward two decades later, there I was. Sitting at a McDonald’s in a foreign country where I now live. I don’t eat McDonald’s every day as I dreamt to, no. As the restaurant intended, it has always been a grab-and-go in between teaching classes when I want something quick and cheap. Cheap? Wow. How things have changed. “Fast food is more expensive in Asia, whereas here it’s the other way around”, my boyfriend reminded me. I guess that’s true. But what intrigued me was how funny life is- when I could not afford it, I daydreamed about it. Now that I do, it’s not even something I want regularly.

That is just how life is. You tend to long for something when it’s out of reach, but once it’s within your grasp, you tend to take it for granted. But that moment, eating that cheeseburger for dinner at a McDonald’s in a dodgy part of the city, with my boyfriend, being in no rush, killing time before our movie, was priceless. The realisation of how much my life has changed, and remembering how special that cheeseburger was.. It was easily the best meal I’ve had that week, and gratitude and appreciation were the secret ingredients.

I hope I can continue to appreciate the other cheeseburgers in my life. Big or small. And learn not to take every single one of them for granted.