Once in a long while, you’ll be lucky enough to enjoy a meal that tastes so good, it makes you want to fall to your knees and sob with joy. The last time this happened to me was when I was invited to dinner by a nice young couple in Sweden. Our host was a hunter, and the main course was a beautiful cut of venison that he’d bagged himself.
It was perfectly seared on the outside, and was a luscious shade of dark pink on the inside, and it was so soft and tender and juicy that it almost seemed to melt like butter in my mouth. Nothing fancy, just the best meat I’d ever tasted in my life. It was just so damn good that I literally had to close my eyes and couldn’t speak for a minute.
So, what was your last heavenly food experience? What was the last meal that brought you to tears (in a good way!)?
Here in Ireland Good Friday is taken mighty seriously and everything closes. Including pubs (except a few that stay open sneakily). Also you’re not meant to eat meat.
A friend of mine, who’s a great cook, decided the only way to get through it was throw a party with a big lunch of roast lamb and lots of booze…
The wheather was nice, her house is on the beach and the lunch was fabulous.
However, the best bit was in the morning. I had arrived the night before and we had sat up drinking wine. At about twelve I crawled out of my bed and sitting in my pyamas watching the sea and the sunshine I was confronted with her fabulous scrambled eggs and a glass of champagne. Divine.
At an off the beaten trail Steak Place in Colorado, my wife and I stopped for a nice steak dinner. (this was our first time in CO and our first time seeing the Rockies, so the ambiance was a factor…)
I ordered a large 27 ounce Free range cut- Medium Rare - …with cubed potatoes and Asperagus…
I cut into the perfectly done, extraordinarily lean cut of beef and placed in my mouth. Instantly the semi-salty, lean striations of beef melted on my palate and my eyes briefly rolled back in my head while I savored every last juicy chew…
I finished in roughly a half an hour…as the experience rivaled any to date with taste of beef being the prime factor.
I was once travelling up the West Coast of South Africa with some visiting Aussies - we rolled into the town of Elands Bay at about 6:30pm. My father had told us that there was an old Fishing Department-run hotel in town that was really cheap, but it turned out that it had been upgraded to a 3* franchise hotel. Our petrol tank was near-empty and the only petrol station in town had closed for the night, so we gritted our teeth and paid for the rooms. We had a wonderful evening being the only customers in the hotel and restaurant, but it was breakfast the next morning that was really the icing on the cake (so to speak).
We wanted to get an early start (one of the Aussies was a surfer who had come to South Africa specifically to surf the West Coast), so we skipped breakfast at the hotel and headed across the street to a small bakery which had just opened. There we bought a loaf of bread that had just come out of the oven, and a chunk of some local home-made cheese, and grabbing a carton of apple and blackcurrant juice from the car wandered off to the harbour to eat.
We sat on the harbour wall, watched the sun struggle up over the horizon and broke chunks of hot bread and cheese off and drank the juice - it was truly a divine moment in time…
Bread often moves me to ecstasy ::drool:: lunchtime I think…
Um, Mr. Philospher, Sir,…
I’ve always wondered how anyone eats That much meat :eek: (More than two pounds)??? I Loves me steak, don’t get me wrong… but How do you eat that and the side dishes too?
Thanks in advance…
A local tavern/restaurant used to serve whitefish baked in a lemon-butter-dill sauce that just exploded with flavor with each bite- ahhhhhhhhhhhh! Alas, they got a bit more health-conscious & no longer offer that exact dish.
This past March, at Aladdin’s in Long Beach, CA- a Mediterranean/MidEastern place- I had absolutely succulent beef/chicken/lamb kabobs with a totally flavorful rice pilaf. Best damn meal of that vacation.
The time: 2 years ago this weekend, at sunset
The place: Anthony’s Restaurant in Bellingham, WA
The food: fresh-baked sourdough bread for starters, roasted fresh Copper River salmon with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed julienned vegetables main course and wild mountain blackberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
My review: Not only was every single bite of everything I had mouthwateringly delicious, the room’s ambience was luxurious and the view ofthe harbor at sunset had a whiff of the divine. This was quite possible the greatest dining experience of my life. I almost cried when I realized I could not physically take another bite of the cobbler without making myself sick. I still wanted the tastes, but my stomach was full to bursting.
I try not think of this meal often, as doing so invariably makes me hungry.
There is a little Italian restaurant on Riverwalk in San Antonio where I had the perfect dinner. Chicken Marsala, perfectly cooked julienne squash, great wine…
It was over this dinner that I realized that the woman I was dining with was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. So I really don’t know if the food was that good or not. My attention really wasn’t on eating!
French onion soup (excellent cheese and the broth wasn’t over salty like most french onion soup)
Escargot in mushroom caps and garlic butter (I know, snails, ewwww, but they were wonderful)
And for main course, succulent roast duck. (Not over cooked and dried out like a lot of places)
The other heavenly meal is the first time I ate lobster that I boiled myself. I have had lobster in restaurants or pre-cooked, but nothing compares to that drop em in live, take em out and eat em in a minute flavor.
I had the best soup I’ve ever tasted in Hawaii on my honeymoon a couple of weeks ago. It was a Thai lemongrass soup - oh, so good! It was slightly thickened, I think with blended potatoes, and had coconut milk, clam sauce, lemongrass, curry and other spices. God, it was one of the most wonderful foods I’ve put in my mouth ever.
Mine’s kind of similar with the ambiance thing, but opopsite, Cause I grew up in the Rockies.
I was about 9(20 or so years ago) and we were visiting family in San Fransisco. We went to dinner at a seaside Greek place in Sausalito. It was really the first time I had seen the ocean, and we lucked out for a warm beautiful day and sat outside watching the sailboats. They were a bakery as well, and yummy fresh bread filled the air. I ate about three baskets of fresh warm sourdough rolls myself , then started on the most juicy perfect lamb chops ever.
We once took a family trip rafting on the Salmon River in Idaho. We did it first class, though. We rode down the river, then a jet boat picked us up and drove us back upriver to a fancy lodge out in the middle of freaking nowhere. I could go on about what a great day that was, but the next morning they served us breakfast.
There’s something about perfectly done pancakes topped with syrup that was made from berries that were picked the day before less than a mile away…
Also, I’ve had a couple of buffalo steaks that have spoiled me for beef for the rest of my life. Buffalo is AMAZINGLY good.
Well, I really miss the Couch (pronounced “cooch”) Street Fish House, which used to operate in Portland. The best lobster bisque I’ve ever found, rainbow trout amandine with asparagus spears, and for dessert: juicy strawberries, injected with Grand Marnier and dipped in chocolate. Mmmmmm!
Then there was the time I had a rare buffalo steak at Jake’s - or was it Jake’s Grill, I forgot. Anyway, that was the tenderest, most flavorful morsel of meat I’ve ever experienced, and the merlot was the perfect complement. But I’ve never seen buffalo on their menu since, and everywhere else I’ve tried it, it was tough and fatty - buffalo has to be cooked slowly on low heat, and the cut is important.
-French onion soup at a brasserie in Paris. The broth was the intense savory essence of beef (it must have had marrow in it) and onion - it was like a revelation - wow, so this is beef! And this is onion! I also had a raspberry creamy pastry that changed my life.
-a Virginia ham someone brought to an office where I used to work. I must’ve eaten 5 ham and mustard sandwiches on homemade bread that day. That ham was PERFECT - the texture was meaty, rather than rubbery, and it wasn’t sweet (I don’t like sweet meat). I have never since eaten its equal.
-a few simple slices of seared rare Kobe beef. My mind reeled and knees weakened from its juicy buttery tenderness.
-fresh pressed white grape juice in upstate New York. Sweet summer corn from same. The very embodiment of goodness and simplicity.
-Thai food eaten at a wet market in Bangkok, served by the kindest, friendliest people. This is good, honest food from the heart. During the meal, my eyes were rolled back so far in my head I was staring at my brains.
I live to eat. If my sense of taste were ever compromised, I may shoot myself in the head.
Recently my wife and I went to a local restaurant and had a grilled duck breast that was so perfect we are afraid to ever eat there again lest we be disappointed.
My boss took me out to lunch the other day, to a little Italian restaurant on the waterfront; I am still dieting, so I chose mussels and clams - they were served in the shell in a soup of tomato, chilli, garlic and white wine and they were orgasmically fantastic - the ‘clams’ actually turned out to be cockles, but really nice plump ones and everything was just so tender and tasty.
