About 10 years ago it was my birthday and my platonic friend who rarely showed any type of affection surprised me with a birthday Dobash cake. She brought her knife and we cut and shared it at park, then continued our usual weekend drive around the island (Oahu). She even brought candles. I don’t know how she knew Dobash was my favorite as I don’t recall ever eating in front of her before. She probably asked me what my favorite cake was in passing.
After our day together, I took the cake home and finished it over the new few days, but it never tasted as good as that day. I’m planning to have my ashes spread in the ocean near that park to celebrate the best cake and birthday I ever had.
When I worked in Aceh, Indonesia, we were working long days and a six day work week. On our one day off, a few of us would go to the beach. A fish vendor there would set up a plastic table in the surf and bring us grilled fish and Bintang beers. We’d sit with our feet in the surf in collegial silence and stare at the horizon.
Didi, that was a terribly touching anecdote, and today I learned about the existence of dobash cake.
I must share one more anecdote generally: Chip wagon fries.
I used to race bicycles a lot. I still have my bike, it’s tuned for criterium racing. I’d train by riding up into the hills and cranking out 100 or more kilometers, and I’d be ravenous at the end of it.
After riding hard, there’s something to be said for a big ol’ bag of greasy chip-wagon fries. They were glorious. They were amazing. These were just sodden, salty carb-sticks but they may as well have been mannah from heaven.
On vacation one day in Miami, we went to the grocery to pick up a few things, including my favorite cheese, imported Swiss Emmental. Back in the apartment where we we staying, I was so disappointed that the cheese was nowhere around - I figured it fell out of the shopping basket or something. The following night I discovered it in the trunk of our rental car, a totally gooey mess after baking for 30 hours in the Florida sun. I was a bit nervous about eating it, but I’m glad I tried it. The absolute best cheese I’ve ever eaten.
It surprised me at the time, but until that day, I hadn’t realized how much better cheese tastes when it is at or above room temperature.
If I was making pancakes at home and I made one that was burnt on the outside and still runny on the inside, I’d probably throw it out. But when you’re camping, and it’s a chilly morning, and you make a pancake like that on your camp stove, that pancake tastes dam delicious.
On a completely different note, in terms of fancy restaurant food I once went to a place on Maui called Mama’s Fish House. It was also probably one of the most expensive meals I’ve had. It’s an open-air place by the beach, it doesn’t look fancy, but the restaurant owns its own fishing boat and the menu is whatever their fishermen caught that day. That day it was ono. It was prepared fairly simply, but it was the best fish I’ve ever had. Probably the only way to get fresher fish would be to catch it yourself.
For a couple of years in the mid-80s, I lived in Montana and helped my birth mother out on her wheat farm. My family are long-time residents of the area and as such, are expected to pitch in at farm/ranch events, just as the neighbors did for us. This meant cattle branding for neighbors when they happened.
As an obvious city slicker, I wasn’t given specialized jobs like roping or the act of actual branding. I was the livestock counter, or I handed items to the folks doing the harder work (vaccine injector, castration tool, e.g.).
After a long day of smelling endless haunches of yearlings being branded, no steak ever tasted so good as the one they fed you when the work was done.
The first was in Paris. I had touched down with my cousin and some friends for a week long trip, and we worked our way down to the apartment we rented. Hungry, we stopped in a little shop in the neighborhood and I got myself a ham and cheese sandwich. What a great sandwich, great bread, great ham, great cheese, and I was desperate for something to eat.
The second was in Ahoskie, NC. I was driving about 12 hours by myself from NY to the southernmost beach in NC, took the scenic route, and picked a little diner type place for something to eat on the way. I got a pulled pork sandwich that was to die for. I’m kind of bummed because it looks like the place shut down quite some time ago.
The last was in Philly. Drove down from NY to get a cheesesteak at Pat’s, after seeing them on some TV show. Drive 2hrs, look at the Liberty Bell, eat a sandwich, drive 2hrs home. It was probably the only time I actually felt sad that I was consuming a sandwich because that meant it would be gone forever. Man, this was over 20 years ago, right around the time I joined the Boards.
Years and years ago when I was a young adult, the in-laws took us out to a teppanyaki grill. This was a brand new dining experience for all of us as we were mid-west meat-n-potatoes types. I picked the scallops, because I had never had them and it all added to the exoticism. Oh, my! They were out of this world! I became a lifelong fan of scallops based on that one experience.
A few years ago, we took the kids to a nearby ranch for a weekend stay. One morning they had a dawn horse ride followed by an outdoor grilled breakfast. I am traditionally a breakfast eater, so by the time we stopped to eat I was starving. The food was abundant, and fairly conventional, but being so hungry and in the out of doors on a cool morning was magical.
I have been fortunate to travel outside of the US, and have formed the opinion that food is generally better in other countries (more natural, closer to “farm to table”, etc.) We were on the Greek island of Santorini (which, by the way, triggers my childhood images of what heaven must be like). We stopped at a place high on the cliffs overlooking the ocean for lunch and I had a simple lamb pita sandwich. It was the best dining experience I have ever had. The pita was so superior to anything I could imagine, and the setting was transcendent.
Actually looking at their menu now it doesn’t seem that expensive to me, not that it’s cheap. It probably just seemed expensive to me at the time because I was only like a year out of college, and at that point in my life wasn’t used to dining any place pricier than Chili’s and similar. I probably have had more expensive meals since then.
On my first date with my then girlfriend we went to a Thai place in Greensboro NC that had just opened, might have been their first week open. It was my first Thai experience, and pad thai was a revelation. I have yet to have a pad thai that good since. It was a little hole in the wall near UNC Greensboro, that on some googling, doesn’t appear to be there anymore. This was 25 years ago, so no a big surprise.
The other, Bahia Burrito, on El Cajon in San Diego. It was walking distance from my house, and the bar down the street. After a few cocktails, a chile relleno burrito was the best thing evar. Coming from Maine and NC, this was an entirely new thing. I highly recommend it to anyone in the area. (this is also old late 90’s information)
I was on a bus tour whale watching trip in Baja California which included a delightful vacation romance. We pulled into a dusty little town that had a seasonal fish cannery, a whale watching side hustle, and not much else. Mid afternoon, too late go out on the water, too soon to call it a night, we took turn around the town.
There was a cafe run out of someone’s home, 2 or 3 tables in the driveway. Do you have any seafood? No, it’s too early. They had beans and rice and pulled pork, but if we cared to come back in a few hours, after the boats came in, there should be some.
She made us the most exquisite ceviche, (even though it was the wrong time of day), and I had a garlic butter shrimp that words cannot do justice to. I forget what my companion had, but her experience was the same.
People that say, in the end, experiences are worth more than things, certainly have a point.
Not the best, but a very welcome change that was delicous.
Decades ago, my parents, my girlfriend and I spent a week in Vegas where was comped for all meals The Stardust. So every meal we ate either at the the buffet or had steak or crablegs for dinner. We never had plain sticky rice, was always some long grain pilaf.
We bought a set of pots and pans to bring home and before we got home, by Dad told my called and told my sister to cook a pot of sticky rice. As soon as we got home, cooked some Spam in our new pan and it was the best Spam and rice we ever had!
About 2017, we visited Boston (from the UK) as well as Philly and DC, for the first time. A weekend of right wing crackpots demonstrating in the Boston common, with the counter demonstrations meant downtown where our hotel was was annoying to be around, so went off had some beers, I think down by the harbour.
Later, when we came back to our hotel and went looking for food, we found a lack of open restaurants, being about 9ish and a part of Downtown without many, and finally found a mexican one. I can probably find the name from my other half if I ask.
This was, as we stepped outside, we said the best mexican food we’d had, and didn’t expect it from Boston. We’ve eaten Mexican food many times in the US, seeking it out a lot, eaten in old town San Diego, most of the strip Vegas restaurants, SF, Portland, LA, Seattle, small places like in Page, and in Utah and Colorado (as well as New York, but I didn’t rate any of those). We don’t get good mexican food in the UK, but we’ve largely eaten very well inside the US.
Just that restaurant still leaves me with a “that was wonderful” four years later.
I was just talking about this with my partner the other day- there is something about the first pad thai you have. Mine was at Komol in Las Vegas about 25 years ago. It was my first time having any Thai food and I had pad thai and tom yum soup. The tom yum I’ve had nearly as good or better than that first cup but I’ve never had pad thai that came close to that first one. I generally like the chili mint & curry type dishes now anyways but every once in a while, I’ll try another pad thai and its always disappointing.
On a completely different note, in terms of fancy restaurant food I once went to a place on Maui called Mama’s Fish House. It was also probably one of the most expensive meals I’ve had. It’s an open-air place by the beach, it doesn’t look fancy, but the restaurant owns its own fishing boat and the menu is whatever their fishermen caught that day. That day it was ono. It was prepared fairly simply, but it was the best fish I’ve ever had. Probably the only way to get fresher fish would be to catch it yourself.
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There’s a reason everybody says to go to Mama’s. The poke I had there on our first trip to Maui is still some of the best, although I’ve since had, and made myself, better poke.
Maui surrounds many of my versions of this thread topic. The fresh pineapple after a long day of travel. The ono fish and chips on Kaanapali Beach. The “Obama Burger” at Paia Fish Market. But the best was day-old pizza out of the rental car trunk while nearly starving driving to Hana. Ambrosia in paradise.
Likewise… was the fish and chips really that good? Or was it that I was eating it in Dingle, Ireland on a gorgeous day, looking out across the Atlantic? Was the steak the best I’ve ever had? Or was it that I was eating it in Waterford Castle?
