What was it? Please try to narrow it down to one- or two at the most. No lists, please!
I think the best thing I ever ate, and I eat it occasionally still, is the Perfect Match roll at my local sushi restaurant. It contains cooked (I don’t eat raw fish) crab and lobster and has the orange roe on top, and some crispy bits on the outside of it. I can’t even explain why it’s so good but it just is. It’s like a mouth orgasm with every bite. I don’t even know what such a good sushi restaurant is doing in my tiny little town in hillbilly country, but I’m so glad it’s here.
The second-best thing would probably be steak Oscar at Morton’s in Vegas.
Anatolia Sampler Platter:
Hummus, Stuffed Grape Leaves and Fillo Dough Rolls.
Served with rose petal jam and pita bread.
Everything goes so well together. Bonus: turkish hot tea for palate cleansing between items.
(Their hot apple tea is great too, but too much sweet with the sampler platter.)
Although if I had to pick my favorites from the platter it’s the hummus & rose petal jam (with pita bread for dipping).
Her name was…
OK, seriously. In serious running for the crown would have to be the chili-crusted rib-eye steak at SW Steakhouse at Wynn Las Vegas. Medium-rare perfection that made me glad to be a carnivore.
A strawberry in a rather elaborate circumstance involving a cliff, a vine, a couple of mice and a tiger, of all things. I guess you had to be there.
Aside from that, I still remember sharing a loaf of freshly baked bread with a lady friend. We’d stopped in a very small village in the mountains and, entirely by accident, we came across a bakery that was pretty well known in the area. It was a nippy autumn morning and the scent of the baking bread was too much to resist. We were told we’d have to wait a bit for the bread to bake, so we looked around the village and eventually found some place that sold us some butter. We ate nearly the entirely loaf right there standing beside the parked car.
a scrambled egg
Had throat cancer and poured cans of liquid into a feeding tube for five months. Took almost an hour to do it but I could swollow again and it all stayed down.
The peppercorn elk medallions at Coyote Cafe in Santa Fe. They were dusted with porcini mushroom dust as well, and I told the waiter to have the chef cook them the way he or she felt was appropriate (I eat meat rare to medium-rare, mostly). They were rare and tender and I told my vegetarian SO 'this is the best food I’ve ever had in my life" after one bite.
1979; somewhere in Maine, around Yarmouth. Restaurant claimed George Washington dined there. Charbroiled halibut steak. The absolute best. EVERYTHING since has paled by comparison. If I could eat that every day, I would swear off red meat. :eek:
I had the freshest sushi of my life almost 10 years ago at a hole-in-the-wall while on vacation in NYC. Tasted like it was caught that morning, and maybe it was. I don’t know the name of the restaurant. I’ve never gone back to NYC and probably never will.
The seafood paella I made for last night’s dinner guests. Honestly, I think it was the best meal I’ve ever served, and the other five people were positively swooning. Shrimp (brined, marinated, then broiled in the shell), clams, mussels, scallops and enough Spanish chorizo to make it really interesting. The cooking broth was a combination of seafood stock, shrimp stock, the juices from the scallop container and some saffron. The sofrito was pulped onion, pulped tomato, a lot of garlic, some smoked Spanish paprika and some red pepper flakes. There was nothing left. One woman paid the ultimate compliment: “That’s the best meal I’ve ever eaten.”
NYC has the best sushi anywhere in my opinion. It is like the ocean is outside the back door.
In the 1960s in NYC there was a kind of chocolate that was put on the top of black & white cookies and eclairs at certain bakeries that tasted incredible. There must have been some secret ingredient added. I have tried but cannot duplicate it and I have never found it again.
Some years back, a regional ice cream manufacturer called Whitey’s put out a flavor called Malted Moose Tracks. ZOMG was that good! Fortunately for my waistline, they didn’t sell it for very long.
Where was this? Chefguy, that sounds amazing. As for the compliment, I could live on that alone for days if someone said that about something I’d made!
Oh, yes! Lobster tail drenched in melted butter the summer I was ten. Even better than the flame-broiled Chicago steak-house beef I had that same summer.
Pizza topped with homemade Italian sausage, served with a basket of buttery toasted garlic bread in a little mom-and-pop place off old US 12 in Wisconsin. Just the thing to warm you up in the dead of winter.
Half-pound burgers served with baskets of French fries cooked in lard. NOTHING gives fries the texture and flavor that lard does! (Except maybe goose fat.)
My own homemade Cannibal Chili. Lots of meat and hotter than Hell.
Fresh-baked bread right out of the oven, slathered with sweet butter.
It’s amazing I haven’t croaked yet from eating all that animal fat… :o
In 1974 I was in basic training for the US Army. This was at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, in August!
At one point we had to go on a long march. We were hot, sweaty, and totally worn out. About two thirds of the way through our drill sergeant(the toughest in the company) had arranged to have iced, sweetened tea available at one of our rest points.
It’s been almost forty years and I still remember how good that tea tasted, how refreshing it was. It’s hard to describe, but the memory will always be with me. It was a combination of circumstances. Drinking itthe next day when rested and cooled, and it would have been good, but not* that* good.
I rarely participate in Facebook, but I registered a couple of years ago, just to see if I could find my old drill sergeant and tell her how much I remembered that tea. I did find her, luckily, her name is distinctive.
I’ve had many amazing foods, but one I fondly remember (and wish I could recreate!)
The opening of a high-end Italian restaurant; it was a private reception. Medallions of beef served in a sort of layer-cake arrangement with liver pate and crispy ginger biscuits. I don’t recall the rest of the multiple-course meal, but I remember those.
A lot of times it’s not just the food, but the ambiance and how hungry I was. A fried fish communal dish in Istanbul after walking all day. Salmon we prepared and cooked on the BBQ after a day of fishing for that very salmon. A pizza after I’ve physically worked hard all day.
Sweet cheese pierogi at Taste of Chicago in 1998. I no longer remember the vendor, sadly. It was like Edmund and the Turkish Delight from Narnia, I swear to fuckin’ god. Best thing I have ever eaten, to this day. I have never found sweet pierogi anywhere near as good anywhere else, and believe me, I have tried.
