Those days when you can’t come up with a killer hashtag for your latest dine-out meal’s photo are the worst. The worst, I tell you. Everyone’s Instagram updates (puh-lease, Facebook check-ins are so yesterday) are overflowing with snazzy snaps of yummylicious food but the real foodies are those who tag their photos effectively. Of course, my Instagram is public. Want to show up in the “explore” pages of all the happening folks, yo.

Which brings me to the word “foodie”. Every Tahir, Danial and Harris calls himself a foodie nowadays. Huh. They think hanging around MM Alam, drinking designer coffee, and ordering customized cupcakes to go counts as foodie material. Time to wake up, dreamers. Real foodies only go out to the most exclusive restaurants, discovered ethnic cuisine before you even heard the word “Thai”, and only drink hipster chai tea. Yes, it’s “chai tea”. Not chai, not tea; chai tea. If the gora calls it chai tea the desi foodie shall call it chai tea also. Don’t worry if you can’t grasp it yet. You probably still drink Nescafe sachet coffee.

Frozen yogurt is for people who can’t afford Movenpick. Piling up toppings onto huge dollops of frozen yogurt like there’s no tomorrow, is not classy. Going to high-end restaurant and paying top dollar for a microscopic scoop of pure heaven is the real deal. Taking a cool photo with your DSLR macro lens makes it all worth it. What, you’re still using the “food” mode on your point-and-shoot? Gosh, I don’t even know why I waste my time with you.

Let me walk you through the basic dine-out, you poor uninformed thing. First, there’s the pre-dine-out meet-up at someone’s place, where we take selfies and group photos. This is a good point to upload a photo to Instagram and announce how much fun we’re having. Then, it’s time to pile up into the car and tell the driver where to go. On the way, it’s perfectly legit to touch up makeup, rearrange hair, or even do a full makeover on the guinea-pig tagalong of the group. (Don’t tell me you don’t know what that is. That’s the socially bankrupt, wannabe coolster classmate we let come along with us because we’re just that generous.) Then, upon arrival at the destination, we all make a graceful exit from the car and take a photo next to the name of the restaurant. We wait until we get inside and use the restaurant’s wifi to upload that photo. This is the critical time where hashtags must, must, must be up to the standard. We stake out the area – you must keep tabs on what the aunties at the next table are discussing, and which waiter seems overly pleased at the arrival of a group of dolled-up teenagers, and then we establish ourselves at the best table. It’s perfectly fine to refuse the table the maitre d’ picks for us. We can wangle our way to the table we choose. We take as much time giggling and fussing over the menu as we want. After placing the order, it’s time to hit the ladies’ room for—you guessed it—more selfies! Polishing off the meal is no issue. Taking the perfect shot of it is. This is the part where we upload the photographic masterpiece to Instagram. Rounding up the meal with a dainty dessert, it’s time to pile into the car again and go home for a good old fashioned gossip session. There you have it, your basic dine-out, “the matchless experience” that is the best entertainment Lahore has to offer.

Originally published in Us Magazine, The News (Pakistan):

http://magazine.thenews.com.pk/mag/detail_article.asp?id=9915

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