Indulge me - the best meal of your life?

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John & Elaine
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Indulge me - the best meal of your life?

Post by John & Elaine »

Describe the when, what, where and why of the best meal of your life.

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opas
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Post by opas »

seriously! :oops:

When our second daughter was born at 07.45 , I had been given a cup of tea and a couple of slices of toast , then she was rushed off to spcial care unit, I missed lunch due to sitting there and staring at her in the incubator.
Evening meal trolley came round and because I had not filled out a menu card at lunch I was back of the queue, the lady explained that I unfortunatly would end up with whatever was left, but, she did have a large choice of curry ( catering for the Asian patients) I opted for a beef rogan josh, rice and naan................24 hours after my last proper meal. It was delicious; seriously not only one of the best curries I had ever eaten but most definatly the best hospital meal.
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Post by Santiago »

I think that's the thing. Our most memorable meals are about the occasion, not the food or the service or the ambiance.

So two of mine are a lunch at Searcy's in The Barbican, when I met Rachel and our wedding reception meal at The Old Vicarage in Worfield.

Another would be the Steak and Kidney pie and chips I had in a pub in Todmorden having spent 3 days living off Kendal Mint Cake on the Pennine Way.

If we're talking about best restaurant experience, mine would be one of these:

Sileni Estate in Hawke's Bay - amazing cuisine, setting and wines for not much money
Circus, London - probably the best of the many big, exciting restaurants in the London dining scene of the late 90s
Ponti's, New York - just for the sheer size of it

Near here:
Torre Laurentii, Sant Llorenc de la Muga

None in the Roussillon I'm afraid. They only ever seem to tick some of the boxes. Yet!
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Post by opas »

I think you hit the nail on the head Jon, its not neccessarily the best dining experience but the reason behind the meal being so good, comforting even.

Another comes to mind from our sailing days, we had been caught up in a storm and had an horrific trip. desperatly seeking somewhere with a sheltered bay, outie poured over the chart and opened Heikels Pilot book to see if there was any further info. He found a bay cathed Vathy on Astaplaia ( we had actualy been heading for Amorgos) looked at the depths and headed there. This book also mentioned a taverna.
Another hour and We rounded the bay, it was like a millpond, heaven!
Then after anchoring we got the binoculars out, spotted a sign on one of the 3 or 4 buildings dotted around , got the outboard out and went ashore.
The old lady seved us a coffee and metaxa and we asked if she had anything to eat. big grin walked away and appeared about 20 mins later with a huge platter of thick home made chips, a bowl of salad and bread.......devine!
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Post by blackduff »

I have a good memory of one meal. There was my wife, myself, a good Canadienne girl and her boyfriend. This was at a restaurant in Firenze, in a summer evening.

The meal was al fresco in a beautiful garden. The host is Italian and he decided exactly what we're going to eat.

During the evening, there's an eclipse of the moon during the meal. The host said he was responsible about most things that evening except the eclilpse of the moon.

Like Jon and Opas, the meal itself it's the biggest part of the evening. The food is easily forgotton in compared with the situation.

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Post by Santiago »

I'd also add a pizza in Piazza Navona in Rome. It's just a beautiful place and the first time I'd had those thin-crust Roman pizzas. Another is a meal I had on Interrail circa 1984 in Rijeka is Yugoslavia (as was). We ate and drank like kings, looking over the Adriatic, for about £8.
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Post by Allan »

For me it was El Bulli by a million miles - a fantastic experience - the best value meal I have ever eaten.

Second comes the Ritz in London - Thursdays used to be steak and kidney pie day - a lovely dining room and great food
Howard Whatmore

Post by Howard Whatmore »

I am new to forumland but have been an onlooker for quite a while.
It's amazing how these threads that have so much promise, soon turn into "I have travelled further than you" or " I have spent more money than you".

Shame.
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Marguerite & Steve
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Post by Marguerite & Steve »

Howard Whatmore wrote:I am new to forumland but have been an onlooker for quite a while.
It's amazing how these threads that have so much promise, soon turn into "I have travelled further than you" or " I have spent more money than you".

Shame.

:roll: :roll:
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Post by mrob343 »

opas wrote:I think you hit the nail on the head Jon, its not neccessarily the best dining experience but the reason behind the meal being so good, comforting even.
Agreed :) Mine was at Mc Do in Pontivy in central Brittany with my wife on our very first date 12 years ago !
We had a lovely evening and well...the rest is history :lol:
Howard Whatmore wrote:I am new to forumland but have been an onlooker for quite a while.
It's amazing how these threads that have so much promise, soon turn into "I have travelled further than you" or " I have spent more money than you".

Shame.
Not necessarily so Howard...
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Post by Allan »

Howard Whatmore wrote:I am new to forumland but have been an onlooker for quite a while.
It's amazing how these threads that have so much promise, soon turn into "I have travelled further than you" or " I have spent more money than you".

Shame.
There are lots of well-travelled people on this forum and I don't think any of them see this as a competition.

The question posed was the best meal of your life, so for most of us it will be a great restaurant experience, probably not locally, or a very special personal occasion.
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Post by Sav »

mrob343 wrote: Mine was at Mc Do in Pontivy in central Brittany with my wife on our very first date 12 years ago !
You don't say :lol:

Cheers Sav :)
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Post by opas »

Howard why not indulge us a little with your meal.

I would be impressed if you said a crisp butty a can of fizzy vimto and a fag after your first bit of rumpy pumpy :oops: , after all mine were not exactly splash the cash experiences, Oldham hospital maternity ward and Greece is hardly far flung.
Santiago, well we all know he has lived all over the place, you only have to look at his website , Blackduff is Canadian so has traveled a few miles to live in france, as for mrob343 and Mc Do , he must have been a rich electrican even then :lol:
Last edited by opas on Fri 30 Mar 2012 08:11, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Santiago »

If I'd wanted to brag about where I've eaten I could have done better than that!

Allen brings up something. We've all talked about meals out (even in a hospital) but perhaps some of the best meals I've had have been at my home or at those of others. The only downside is the washing up.

I'm not sure I would have admitted to taking my wife to McDonalds for a first date but then Rachel took me to her favourite kebab shop! I took her to "Home", a very nice restaurant in Shoreditch, cos I'm much classier :lol:

I think when you have eaten in many good restaurants it becomes difficult to say which was the number one. Perhaps El Bulli was so different and innovative that it sticks in your memory, Allen. People ask me which is my favourite wine and it's impossible to answer.
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Post by Santiago »

Howard Whatmore wrote:I am new to forumland but have been an onlooker for quite a while.
I've been on the forum a long time and it's amazing how many posts which aim to cause a bit of a stir start with those words :lol:
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Howard Whatmore

Post by Howard Whatmore »

Crikey! I didn't mean to upset anyone.
Clam Chowder on Fisherman's Wharf in SF was memorable for me.
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Post by Marguerite & Steve »

Howard Whatmore wrote: Clam Chowder.
Hubby loves clam chowder.
We have just been to the UK this week and loved eating fish & chips out of the wrapper walking along Skegness beach in the sunshine. :lol: :lol:
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Post by ChristineM »

For me there is nothing to beat Mendy's Kosher Deli in Grand Central Station
Their beef and pastrami sandwiches are to die for.

In the old Jewish quarter of Paris (St Pauls) Schwartz's Deli rue des Ecouffes,
they do the best Kosher food in France.
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Post by blackduff »

Howard Whatmore wrote:Crikey! I didn't mean to upset anyone.
Clam Chowder on Fisherman's Wharf in SF was memorable for me.
I guess we should ask what type of chowder. There's at least two variations: Manhattan Chowder and New England Chowder. Both are great. I would expect that San Francisco would serve the New England version.

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Post by Sav »

Sugar coated Churros :D
It has to be done :lol:

Cheers Sav :)
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Post by Sue »

I think my most memorable meal was at a chinese restaurant on North Beach Miami. The food was excellent and the ambience very pleasant but neither made the evening memorable. I ordered the sizzling steak which quite literally was sizzling on a very hot griddle. I must have put too large a piece in my mouth and then not chewed sufficiently and it became stuck in my throat. It wouldnt go up or down and I couldnt breath. My ex husband (nothing to do with this incident) thumped me on the back and thankfully the meat shot out. The lady who owned the restaurant asked if he was a doctor to which he truthfully replied no a builder. I dont think I will ever forget it.
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Post by Marguerite & Steve »

We had lunch at the Ritz in Paris, meal was lovely, but had better, but was more fascinated at how the other half lived, a lady on the next table asked the Sommelier to get a bracelet she has seen in a display case in the corridor, and she said she would have it and sat eating her lunch with it on, I was too busy being nosey to enjoy my meal.
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Best meal ever…

Post by Robert Ferrieux »

The best meal I ever had was the first one Helen cooked for us after we got married: strange greenish looking soup with a few weeds floating in it + a wonderful lemon-meringue pie which she'd learnt to make at night school.
R.
Last edited by Robert Ferrieux on Sun 01 Apr 2012 01:05, edited 1 time in total.
Howard Whatmore

Post by Howard Whatmore »

blackduff wrote:
Howard Whatmore wrote:Crikey! I didn't mean to upset anyone.
Clam Chowder on Fisherman's Wharf in SF was memorable for me.
I guess we should ask what type of chowder. There's at least two variations: Manhattan Chowder and New England Chowder. Both are great. I would expect that San Francisco would serve the New England version.

Blackduff
You seem like a well travelled person Blackduff, I wasn't aware that there was more than one type of clam chowder, what is the difference?
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Post by Sue »

Again in Florida we ate several times at the Ponderosa, one of these pay for your main and eat as much as you like starters and dessert. My husband, son and I are meat eaters but my daughter who was 11 at the time was and still is a veggie. Something the USA didnt recognise in the 80s. Anway my daughter loved the "mushroom soup" and had 3 or 4 helpings. Till this day we have never had the heart to tell her it was clam chowder!! Funny how little things come back to you to make something memorable.
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Post by blackduff »

Howard Whatmore wrote:
blackduff wrote:
Howard Whatmore wrote:Crikey! I didn't mean to upset anyone.
Clam Chowder on Fisherman's Wharf in SF was memorable for me.
I guess we should ask what type of chowder. There's at least two variations: Manhattan Chowder and New England Chowder. Both are great. I would expect that San Francisco would serve the New England version.

Blackduff
You seem like a well travelled person Blackduff, I wasn't aware that there was more than one type of clam chowder, what is the difference?
The Manhattan Chowder is a tomato base. The New England version is a chowder which has cream. Both are quite tasty. In California I never found the Manhattan chowder but the New England is found in bars/restaurants throughout California.

I have lived in both California as well as Manhattan and ate chowder in both places.

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Post by Robert Ferrieux »

from Helen

I'm glad Robert enjoyed my bridal offerings........but the best meal in my experience was not one which I'd eaten but one which I gave.
We were visiting our elder son in New Caledonia and spent a week on the Ïle des Pins, classified as one of the most beautiful places on the planet. One of the wonders of this island paradise was a place called La Piscine Naturelle, a large bay enclosed on three sides by pine trees and teeming with tropical fish of all shapes and hues.
With the help of masks & breathing tubes we dived underwater & spent what seemed like an eternity feeding the fish rice crispies, cornflakes and bread. Hundreds of multicoloured specimen - clown fish, parrot fish - swished past us, nibbling our fingers with their minute teeth, nipping me on the thigh in their frenzy to get at the food. I felt as though I'd fallen into an aquarium as this living rainbow rushed to and fro in front of my amazed eyes. It was one of those psychedelic experiences never, never to be forgotten.
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Post by John & Elaine »

Having enquired about ‘People’s Best Meals of their Life’. I guess it was inevitable I would be asked about mine. And when one reflects, you start to realise what a difficult question this is! My mind immediately flooded with single things! Like the best Rosti/Hash Browns in a Chinese Restaurant in San Francisco. The garlic mash served with a Christmas lunch at Citronelle in Santa Barbara. (They used to decorate their buses with reindeer antlers too!). The fish and chips still served out of newspapers somewhere on a cold, wet day in New Zealand. The Chicken Kiev’s at an Italian in Soho (London’s!). Some watercress served alongside steak and chips in Monte Carlo. The sauté potatoes at another Italian near Tower Bridge. Elaine sampled a Brie and Redcurrant jam sandwich in the Bay of Islands (NZ) which she adored. And so on.

And my daughter reminds me of what we used to call Crabby Rice – a mixture concocted by an old lady in a Poissonerie in Montpellier’s Polygone Centre: outrageously simple and outrageously yummy at the same time – whack (technical cooking expression courtesy of Jamie Oliver!) some lightly garlicked mayonnaise in to some rice with white crabmeat and tinned peas, leave to infuse in the fridge overnight, and devour on a sunny beach next lunchtime

Then there’s the meals sometimes of which the food has little or nothing to do with it! The meal delights because of so many things the occasion, perhaps something is being celebrated, the ambience or surroundings, the location, or something that happened. An example of the latter took place many years ago at Le Français in Kemp Town, Brighton.

Oiled by a lot of wine about eight of us were playing a game where you had to describe who and why you would choose to be if you were someone else. Finally as she was clearing away the starters we asked the young French waitress the same question. ‘I’ll give it some thought for a moment.’ she replied. Returning shortly, to disgrace us all with “Can I go on being me? I am quite happy with myself!”.

As a professional speaker, you are lucky enough to be entertained very well and I have many memories of stunning meals. Once, in Monte Carlo at The Royal Palace Hotel, France’s foremost chef, a supremely well-known man whose name eludes me, presented us with 13 courses of delight of which the dessert was just historic. A hand-crafted plate-size violin complete with chocolate strings and, also in chocolate, even the keys for string-tightening! Amazing!

At the Carlton Centre Hotel in Johannesburg, in pre-apartheid South Africa, the giant prawns in piri-piri butter were also memorable. I can’t remember the absurdly low price, but the conference organiser was paying a princely sum of £7 for my five star suite!

A Chinese take away meal bought in Rotarua which, thanks to a microwave, kept us going for days remains the only pleasant memory I have of that town! In Iceland a fish dish – I think the fish was called Bourri – was superb. That self-same fish, a deep cold water fish, in Australia is a shallow, warm water fish and tastes completely different!

We enjoyed a wonderful meal in the restaurant in the Sydney opera house which, of necessity, included Kangaroo served very rare.

But, living where we do, I should include a few words about wines. Or, maybe that should be – being who I am, I should include a few words about wines!! Without doubt the most exceptional red wine I have ever enjoyed was a Chateau La Lagune 1966. Probably the most expensive too! Another memorable bottle was that provided for my by one of my dearest chums, Jerry Shearing, for my fortieth birthday. He tried to get a bottle of something from that very year – 1946 – but in the end settled for a 1947 because apparently ’46 was not a good year. In those days wines could be imported into the UK in a vat and bottled there and still somehow merit the description ‘chateau bottled’. Remarkably Jerry bought the bottle from the very same man who had actually bottled it at Harveys in Bristol all those years before. A story so remarkable it made the front page of the local paper and, of course my bottle was wrapped in that page.

I shall never forget the amazing white wines in New Zealand and our old home of Collioure provided some stunning wines of all hues but amongst the most special were its rosés. And of the reds, if you ever get a chance to sample Les Culottes – go for it!

One meal I shall certainly never forget was that of our wedding day in Barbados. There were four of us. Elaine, myself, stepson Chris and a friend Carl who had kindly served as a witness for us earlier in the day. Our friend Linda had given me a birthday candle which, when lit, played Happy Birthday just loud enough to irritate the hell out of all the other diners. Which it proceeded to do, given that we couldn’t ‘extinguish’ it! Just to add to things, I had corrected the Maitre D’s pronunciation of the wine we had chosen. Nor did the Maitre D approve of Carl eating in his restaurant, most especially not his ‘high fiving’ all the waitresses! We were seated at the table and, alongside us, the Hotel Manager who was entertaining a party of obviously important guests. Chris had ordered a soup starter which he decided needed some salt. An old fashioned salt cellar with a suitable small spoon was set in front of him. Sure enough, as he turned the spoon to add the salt, a fly fell from it into his bowl…

I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO DO THIS!!!

We practically fought to be the first to exclaim, ‘Waiter, Waiter – there’s a fly in the soup!’

This secured the attention of everyone. Especially at the next table, of course! We ate free that night, wine and all!!

But is there a meal which for me stands head and shoulders above the rest? For lots of people who responded to this question the answer was ‘Yes’. For me it was ‘No’. Bringing me to the inevitable conclusion that I have been spoilt stupid!!!
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Post by ChristineM »

John and Elaine, whilst I accept most of your submissions, are in deed excellent, the only site I would disagree is Sydney Opera House, I found the food bland and quite frankly uninspiring, where as The Sydney Cove Oyster Bar, is excellent. You mentioned Kangaroo, I found that NT, offered the better spread, Winkiku in Uluru offered a form of Meze, where you could try Kangaroo, Croc, and Shark, they were all excellent, but NT has a great restriction in alcohol and ID is needed even in 5* Restaurants.
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Post by Robert Ferrieux »

Howard Whatmore wrote:
It's amazing how these threads that have so much promise, soon turn into "I have travelled further than you" or " I have spent more money than you
".

I think you've got a point there, Howard!
As a bit of an anti-climax, ONE of my best meals was today's lunch.
I didn't feel like slaving over a hot stove so My Better-Half & I traipsed to my favourite pizza place in the world: Rimini in Canet Plage, where the waitresses are jolly and the kitchen is impeccable and the pizzas are simply the very best you can find this side of VenteMiglia.
A table outdoors in the warm sunshine, MBH paying me a delightful compliment, and well-behaved little kids enjoying their Cokes around us: bliss.
All this to prove you needn't travel far, nor do you have to spend a lot of mullah to enjoy a fine meal in the best possible company. :D

Helen
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