Fried Chicken Skin.
I can get corn fed, dry aged, USDA Prime rib eyes at our local neighborhood butcher shop for around seven or eight dollars a pound. Broiled lightly on the grill to just on the rare side of medium rare rubbed with fresh garlic and a dab of blue cheese just off the grill, there isn’t a better steak out there.
Gribenes. Yes, that is right up there.
My mom’s Chicken Adobo. If you haven’t had it you just don’t know.
I came here to mention cheeses. Especially Gorgonzola.
Also:
Beef stew with Westmalle Triple
Pasta with tomato, basil & parmesan
That hot & sour Thai fish soup with coconut cream
Barbecued Shrimp with a bit of lemon.
Pizza with anchovies
Costco is selling Oreo bark right now. It’s hunks of milk chocolate layered with white chocolate with Oreo pieces mixed in.
It is godly.
Good old American Apple Pie. With a nice thick slice of cheddar cheese on top.
After a nice meal of flank steak and mashed potatoes.
Blinis with caviar, Smetana, chopped onions and fresh lemon juice. 
Carne asada tacos on freshly made corn tortillas with generous lashings of El Yucateco.
Nice fat ripe backyard-grown tomato in August. Served one of these ways:
- Just plain with salt.
- Sliced onto a BLT.
- Diced with garlic, fresh basil, olive oil and white wine vinegar.
::counting months until August 2009::
This is truly the food of the gods. Follow it up with some half-baked ice creamor death by chocolate cake and you will know the meaning of life.
It does seem wrong, but it tastes sooooo right. The cheap places use hamburger or bottom round that they’ve beaten the hell out of with a mallet; the good places actually use a decent cut of sirloin.
Am I the only one who objects to McDonalds’ French Fries being on the OP’s list? Even if I were to give the slot to any french fries at all, there are a heck of a lot of places that make fries a heck of a lot better than Mickey D’s.
And I think we need some more ground-rule guidance. Are we looking for the perfect elementary foods, or the perfect dish made of combinations of elementary foods? For comparison, the former would be something like bacon, homemade bread, or fresh garden tomato, while the latter would be something like a BLT.
Mmm. Tongue tacos. (Tacos de lengua. Reason enough for the invention of cows. And Mexicans.)
Peanut butter. Real peanut butter, of course. Butter made with the goodness of peanuts = the perfect food.
Now, peanut butter with warm, fresh baked bread spead underneath would be even better but that would be two foods.
Corned Beef
French Onion Soup
Pineapple.
But this:
… is a close second.
One of these days I am going to work up the courage to try lengua.
teela brown’s post reminded me: grape tomatoes, sliced and drizzled with some good olive oil and topped with a sprinkle of sel gris. A wonderful snack, and more or less guilt-free.
Indonesian/Malay style satay, fresh from the street vendor. They are very tasty.
My mum’s pastel tutup. It’s also an Indonesian dish. It’s kind of like a shepherd pie, baked from potatoes, meat and vegetables.
Fresh sweet corn.
Deeply purple cherries.
Fresh apples right off the tree.
Properly cooked duck.
Chinese roast pork.