KUALA LUMPUR, June 30 -- Some brunches begin with hunger. This one began with catching up.

The first cups arrived before the menus had been properly studied. A flat white pulled from Rwanda beans. A pour-over of Kenya AA from Kopenhagen Coffee Roaster.

Conversation filled the gaps between each appearance of our coffees: updates on our lives, juicy gossip, meandering stories interrupted and resumed or never quite finished.

This is how the four of us catch up, a double date of sorts. It's a pattern.

Only later did we realise what we ordered from the menu provided a different sort of pattern altogether. One that reveals itself gradually, then suddenly seems impossible to ignore.

The first clue was the Chicken Pancake Paradise.

The name...