PrintAdd a comment:
Previewing your comment:
HTML Hints
Some HTML is OK: <a href="URL">link</a>, <strong>strong</strong>, <em>em</em>
Comment Guidelines
Post whatever you want, just keep it seriously about eats, seriously. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. Learn more at our Comment Policy page.
If you see something not so nice, please, report an inappropriate comment.
Start Talking!
Need a question answered? Have advice to share? Start a Talk topic now!
Sign up to get your questions answered and share advice.
19 Comments:
I miss when my grandmothers were alive. Feast of the 7 fishes on Christmas eve was a fav of mine. And all those great desserts. Just brngs back all kinds of memories.
JerzeeTomato at 2:59PM on 04/05/08
Duck Three Ways appetizer and Seared Ahi Tuna with chocolate cake for dessert at Wolfgang Puck's upper dining room, Downtown Disney, Orlando.
LunaPierCook at 3:00PM on 04/05/08
Quite possibly everything we had at Per Se in NYC.
frederika at 6:00PM on 04/05/08
Omikase at Soto in nyc. Wow.
ChiefHDB at 7:54PM on 04/05/08
Rijstaffel. Described it here last year: http://www.seriouseats.com/talk/2007/03/rijstaffel.html
baboo at 8:40PM on 04/05/08
@Luna Pier -- one of my favorite dishes as well! I haven't been in a year or so....now I know what I"m doing this week! Yum!
jcrisco at 8:52PM on 04/05/08
OH...and mine was at Jeff Ruby's the Waterfront restaurant in Cincinatti. I can't remember at all what I ate but it was such a big deal for me to go. I had begged my parents (who frequented there) and they finally took me for my 14th birthday. Gosh...I was an extremely food obsessed even at that age.
jcrisco at 8:56PM on 04/05/08
I've never had a "best meal"
I don't live on the East Coast.
paris221966 at 1:16AM on 04/06/08
When I was in high school and living in the South Pacific, my family and I took a vacation to the Cook Islands. One night, we had dinner at a restaurant whose name I can't remember (my mother swears it was the country club; I think it was either Sails or Windjammer). We had a very basic meal - steak with a garlic cream sauce, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, and a dessert platter with an assortment of chocolate items.
It was incredible. The steak was amazing - tender and delicious, seasoned delicately, and perfectly accompanied by the sauce. The dessert platter is something Mom and I still talk about 15 years later - chocolate cake, chocolate mousse in chocolate cups, and one handmade truffle. We both want to go back to try to find that chocolate dessert again.
Runners up include an amazing six-course meal at Victoria and Albert's in Disney; the sushi at a local sushi restaurant in Greensboro, NC called Sushi Republic, and few memorable homemade meals for friends and family.
jenilowrance at 3:16AM on 04/06/08
Porterhouse for two at Luger's thirty years ago. I remember thinking $45.00 is a LOT of money for this before we devoured it. To this day I'm disappointed in every other steakhouse I visit.
bessfour at 11:07AM on 04/06/08
I have not finished my quest yet. I still have many destinations to try before I can make an absolute statement regarding "Best Meal". I have a few interim over the top memories. The filet mignon at The Whaling Station in Monterey, The tuna tartare at the California Grill in Disney, the calamari at F'iore d'Italia in San Francisco, Sophie's salad at Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill in NYC, and the best so far? The fresh stone crab claws my dad catches for me when I visit him and they are in season. Yum!!
crazyspice at 5:54PM on 04/06/08
After a nightmarish trip home one Thanksgiving weekend, with slow, heavy traffic, non-stop heavy rain and sleet, and the scenic beauty ( ;-) of 81 South and 78 E through NY and PA, we came home to a near-empty fridge and a cold house.
I made omelets and toast, and we had glasses of some sort of wine to medicate and eradicate the pounding sound of traffic still in our heads. Changed into our jammies and warm socks, the meal was heaven. Comfort food in your own house makes the best meals sometimes.
moibec at 6:14PM on 04/06/08
I can't pick a "best meal," there are so many different kinds of foods, I can't lump them all into the same category. How can eating fried chicken, black eyed peas, greens, mashed potatoes and sweet tea my first time in Alabama be on the same level as a pitcher of mango margaritas and THE BEST tacos on the street in Mexico?
PumpkinBear at 9:11PM on 04/06/08
the most memorable meal i have ever had was at the fourth street grill in berkeley. it must have been about 1987, when the great amy shaw was the chef. i had a caesar salad and linguine with clams, very common dishes, but the food was so completely unlike anything i had ever had before -- dead simple and full of flavor. the romaine lettuce in the caesar salad was elegantly arranged and there was a salty little shower of freshly grated parmesan and two oily, intensely fishy anchovy fillets lightly balanced on the top. the spaghetti had been twirled into a neat little cone and the clams had been left in their little black shells and were arranged in a lovely spiral around the edge of the plate. i could hardly bear to eat anything, it was all so beautiful. nowadays these touches are commonplace, but back then, it was a revelation.
i've had more elaborate meals since then but i was so surprised at all the tastes, and the elegance and simplicity of the food.
cybercita at 10:24PM on 04/06/08
Steak Diane at a riverside restaurant in Montreal. The tableside service was impeccable and we had chosen the perfect wine. I was so enchanted with the table service that I had Crepes Suzette for desssert.
Funnily enough, I cannot recall the name of the place, but I recall the room, the lovely setting and a fireplace.
The nicest family meal we've enjoyed was a birthday dinner for my daughter at the John Ash Winery in the Santa Rosa, CA area. Wow food and another fireplace - this time on a rainy night.
suegsf at 3:58AM on 04/07/08
At Cuvee Notre Dame - a Belgian restaurant in Center City Philadelphia (now closed - waaaaaaaaaaaaahhh). It was duck braised in cherry beer with garlic-roasted mashed potatoes, asparagus with a butter and lemon sauce and this endive & tomato salad with a bleu-cheese dressing - made from scratch.
Honorable mention: Porterhouse steak at Rittenhouse Barclay with creamed spinach and garlic mashed potatoes - do you see the pattern here LOL?
BITTER at 9:01AM on 04/07/08
potato crusted fish (i don't remember what kind) with lemon wedges, served with buttered zuchinni. white wine, soft bread. it was simple, it was perfect. i don't know the name of the restaurant, but i could easily find it again.
it was a dinner with people i worked with, paid for by a CEO who had no idea he was going to get canned a month later.
redhead at 8:37PM on 04/07/08
Can't remember exactly. But I can remember some really magical meals that had to do more with setting and the company than the food.
Romantic meals at restaurants
Even more romantic meals at home
Breakfasts at diners with friends, laughing and dishing the dirt about the previous evening
Meals outside, eating meat snatched off the grill
Family meals/holidays (especially Christmas Eve and Hanukkah)
Meals on vacations: Cape Cod, Montreal, Paris, Hawaii
Dinner off a shrimp truck on Oahu's North Shore after a day at the beach with my mom and brother
Even some truly awful meals cooked with my friends at girl scout camp
I'm getting misty now.
Kerosena at 9:18PM on 04/07/08
My husband surprised me on our anniversary with a full meal of take-out from Solo NYC. Everything was good, but the steak and chicken dishes we split were so good that I'm practically drooling just thinking about them now.
Stufsocker at 11:51AM on 04/08/08