Hmmm this is a tough one. I’ve narrowed it to two. Okay, three
Zaca Taco in Chicago near the Midway airport: Chimichanga. Fresh skirt steak, cheese, wrapped in a tortilla made on the premises, then fried to perfection.
Burgatory in Pittsburgh at the Waterworks mall in Fox Chapel: The Meet Your Maker burger, Fries with gorgonzola cheese, and Jalapeno cornbread. Yes, I know most “Wyagu” beef sold in this country is not actually Wyagu beef. I don’t care, it’s still the best hamburger I ever ate. Their buffalo burger is also killer. In fact, all their burgers are delicious.
Shanghai Tokyo in the Pittsburgh suburb of Sarver: Spicy Combination sushi rolls. A bowl of delicious hot and sour soup, a small but very tasty salad with ginger dressing, and eighteen rolls containing 3 types of perfect sushi heaven.
I guess the best ever was at a small restaurant in Virginia Beach; had the surf & turf- a steak cooked to absolute perfection and crab legs. Not just ANY crab legs, tho- these came out of the kitchen pre-cracked, the hugest crab legs I have ever seen. Giant hunks of meat lying there inviting me to eat, herbed clarified butter to dip… Unbelievably good.
Runner up was at a seafood place in Orlando, Florida- crayfish. I had never had them before and it was love at first bite.
No hesitation on my part: the meuniere amandine at Irene’s in New Orleans. The fish that night was puppy drum, which has a lemony taste of its own and brought the sauce to an… ecstatic level.
Literally the most perfect thing I’ve ever tasted. If it was a 10/10, the next best thing I’ve ever had was maybe a 6/10.
my family and a few neighborhood friends do a modified “low country boil” in the back yard every fourth of july and it is the best thing i ever ate…until the next year’s batch. we use a huge old 200 quart pot that my mom use to own and put it over a fire pit.
into it goes massive quantities of shrimp, clams, mudbugs (crawdaddies), crab, oysters, corn on the cob, red potatoes, andouille sausage, and a few hot dogs for the little kids.
the cooking liquid is made from 2 bottles of white wine, 2 bottles of red wine, a six pack of a dark beer, 2 full cans of old bay seasoning, a bottle of tobasco sauce, 6 full heads of garlic, 3 lemons, 4 full yellow onions, and water to bring the pot to just a little more than half way full.
once everything is done (you have to add ingredients at different times), you remove the basket from the pot and dump out the whole mess on a picnic table covered in news paper. then, for the rest of the day, you stand around with a bottle of beer in one hand while eating with the other.
Two things. Oysters in Bouziques, south of France. Fresh from the Etang de Thau. Half a dozen raw, half a dozen grilled with a breadcrumb, parmesan, garlic and olive oil topping. The liquid in the bottom of those shells was utter nectar.
Secondly, The crispy chilli chicken wings from the Eastern Bamboo in Darlington (north-east England) Unpromising location but I’ve yet to find anything better. They would be my death row meal.
A potato and cheese burrito at a Hispanic food festival when I was a 20-something. How could something so simple be so good?
A bowl of pozole at a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant called Maria’s in Gallup, New Mexico. Once again, simple and good. Not surprised to find out just now that the restaurant is still open.
Also in Gallup, at the flea market: An “Indian taco” which was a green onion and a strip of mutton on fry bread. MMMMMMMMM!
On a recent epi of ‘Monsters inside me’, which I watch for the gross out factor, a couple folks picked up parasites from sushi. A food safety expert explained that in the US and Canada, all raw fish is frozen before serving as sushi, so it’s not likely the fish is caught then served immediately. The risk of parasites is too high.
I can’t name just one thing, but my fondest food memories are all so circumstantial - usually involving a person who lovingly prepared that food for me. (Aunt M’s blueberry torte, or the peach ice cream Granddaddy always made for my birthday, or my mother’s homemade buttermilk biscuits… that sort of thing.)
But the salmon stories reminded me: After my senior year in high school, I visited my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Washington. One day, my uncle went on a fishing trip and came home with fresh salmon. Me, from rural south Georgia, had eaten salmon before - always from a can, usually prepared as fried croquettes. I hated salmon! But I was raised to be polite, and nerved myself to take a few polite bites and fill up on side dishes.
That fish was a freaking revelation! Who knew that salmon tasted like that?! I hope I’d have shown more restraint in polite company, but I was eating with family that night, and ate like a farm hand! Delicious!
Something else came to mind - when I was maybe 12 or so, my parents took us (my brother and I) to Mackinac Island. We didn’t stay ON the island, we stayed somewhere else and took a ferry (if I’m remembering correctly). On the way there from Chicago, we stopped in what I want to say was Saugatuk, MI - and we had a pizza and bought some fudge (two different places but they both stand out) - that was the best pizza I have ever had in my life. And the fudge was good too.
I don’t think the Wikipedia entry is going to be much help. “Yabbies”? Today is the first I’ve heard “mudbugs”, although you can bet that’s my default term from now on.
The best Mexican food I ever ate was in New Mexico, and it wasn’t just one meal at one place, it was tons of places in Albuquerque and Taos. The huevos rancheros at this one place in Taos whose name I don’t remember - ohmygod!
I’ve had two tremendous meals whose constituents are a mystery to me.
One was at an Italian place in Providence, RI–I want to say Al Forno?–where I wasn’t there when the order was placed. A friend’s parents called me to say they were at a dinner event associated with the university and I should head over immediately. No idea what I was eating (the meal was a large number of appetizers, amuse-bouches, and similar), and it was delicious.
The other was in Hanoi. Representatives from a university took me to a local restaurant for lunch and couldn’t translate most of the food. It was exquisite, and probably more so than if I’d had a chance to be squeamish.
