What is the best meal you have every eaten?

[Shookethtothecore]

Just that really, either home cooked, restaurant or food hut- anywhere in the world. What’s the best thing you have ever eaten?

I’m sad I can’t have a Katz deli Rueben sandwich everyday and it’s too far for me to go to just for one (New York) although my waist line is probably greatfull

steak and chips in a restaurant in Killarney after a 6 hour hike over the mountains in the lashing rain. the buttered barmbrack I had under a hedge in the rain a few hours earlier was the second nicest.

I have two . First one whilst on holiday in Portugal . Took an all day boat trip , lunch was on a beach which was freshly caught sardines bbqd with crusty bread and wine.
2nd on holiday in Jersey overlooking a lovely harbour , a seafood platter . Both simple meals , but divine.
Never to be repeated because I'm a veggie now !

But another place that's amazing (or was pre pandemic hope they survived) is Salt in Stratford upon Avon, if you are taking a holiday near there check it out for the tasting menu. (Cheaper at lunchtime but still delicious)

At home, lasagna with the ragu slow cooked for hours. Followed by my mums trifle, only made once a year (Christmas) which comprises home made cake soaked in Sherry, cherries, home made creme anglaise, whipped double cream. A heart attack in a dish!

Linguine and prawns at Balthazar in NY. We were hungry and literally looked around from the spot we were standing, Balthazar was across the street. It was heaving inside but they offered us a tiny table in the corner, so small the plates barely fitted on it! The people watching was almost as good as the meal (which was so simple and absolutely delicious).

I'm not very good at picking favourites but a more recent one was beef la lot and a prawn dumpling soup in Vietnam. Yuuuuum. This was at a little restaurant but the street food was pretty great too.

The ones that really stick in my mind are eating steak frites in a cafe directly opposite the Eiffel Tower in Paris, a burger (with a big slice of beetroot on it) and fries at a roadside cafe in Noosa Australia and a delicious fish dish with the best wine I’ve ever tasted at the Lone Star in Barbados. Also eating the best lobster I’ve ever eaten at Sandy lane in Barbados.

I’ve eaten in loads of nice restaurants and 5 star places etc but these are the ones that stick in my mind. I just remember the feeling of utter bliss as I ate - it was as much to do with the setting/the company/the end of a perfect day as the food itself. The food was the icing on the cake.

Duck a l'orange in 1990.

A raspberry ripple ice-cream in a tub at the theatre in 1978.

I must put in a mention for my mum's apple pie. My mum can't cook savoury food to save her life but she makes the best apple pie in the world.

A chicken breast on an overnight flight from New York when I was 15. I woke up from a nap, ate the chicken breast, and went back to sleep. To this day it remains in my memory as one of the best things I’ve ever eaten!

It was at a very expensive restaurant at Lake Garda that I booked for my partner's 50th, 5 courses of really sublime food. The tastes of pork will be etched in my memory forever drool

@MonkeyPuddle

The lasagne my mum would make from scratch on my birthday every year when I was a kid.

Oooh, yes - my mum's lasagne. Or maybe her Sunday roast. Mine is never as good.

The absolute best was a canard a magret in Avignon, in an outdoor restaurant (Citron Vert). Probably because it was my first grown up holiday, just me and mum, and it was a proper posh french meal that I'd ordered in french and it was just a perfect evening.

@ahoyshipmates

Fish & chips on the seafront in Swanage in about 1984.

My home town they definitely do beautiful fish and chips there

I must put in a mention for my mum's apple pie

Oh god, you’ve just made me remember my nanna’s apple pie - my mouth is watering. She never passed the recipe on before it was too late, it was all in her head (she did say the secret to her perfect pastry was cold hands). I’ve never tasted pie like it before or since.

Oh wow these sounds amazing.

It’s true it isn’t just the food it’s the whole experience. There’s a falafel stand in Barcelona called moaz and I think it’s a chain but I remember on our drunken nights out linking our stomachs with these and I wish I could have one at least once a month. But it wouldn’t be the same would it?

Chicken stroganoff in Koper, Slovenia in the 90s.
Wiener schnitzel in a random Stuttgart hotel.

It’s true it isn’t just the food it’s the whole experience.

Definitely - and sometimes a particular thing hits exactly the right spot, and it's very hard to explain why or recreate it.

@TiddyAndFletch I wish we could recreate it.

Burger King spicy bean burger at services on m1 with extra mushrooms.

So big standard but I'd just been in Kosovo for 6 months during conflict with a really limited diet and when I got off plane and got in my car to go home on leave it was first proper food I'd had in 6 months and tasted amazing.

When we used to visit France as kids, there was a market that sold fresh rotisserie chicken, cubed fried potatoes with onions and huge freshly baked baguettes. Oh my God I still dream about it We would take it all to the park, strip the chicken pff with our fingers and mop up all the juice with the bread. It was so incredibly tasty.

It's not classy in any way but Deli-ish in Leicester do a roast pork melt.

Thick sliced white bread, liberally buttered, freshly roasted pork loin, stuffing, apple sauce & cheese. toasted in a panini press till the cheese is stringy and the outside is crispy. Served with a chunk of crackling.

Onboard Royal Caribbean 'Oasis of the Seas' in 2016 - we had a 7 course meal in one of the up charge restaurants 150 it was called and omg one of the courses in particular was this beef which just crumbled in your mouth! I've never ever had anything like it since!

A ten course tasting menu at the restaurant of Georges Blanc in Vonnas, France. I think I was about 12. I'm 46 now and still remember it.

Shrimp gumbo from a pot some guy was cooking in his front yard in New Orleans. I want to eat it every day.

As a teenage in menorca, was in an orange grove I think on an excursion...we were given toasted bread rubbed with garlic, tomato and olive oil...I'd never had it before and it was incredible

The fish my uncle caught one late morning. He dropped a few fillets in to my Mum on his way home and we had it for lunch lightly floured, fried in butter, with lemon. Must have had it with a salad freshly picked from the garden, new potatoes grown at home, and blackcurrant juice made from our own currants, and it was just how food should be: simple, amazing flavours, completely fresh.

Honourable mention goes to the Christmas dinner I hurriedly scraped together the year the ducks went off. I found some chicken pieces in the freezer and roasted them in the oven with homemade stuffing balls and pigs in blankets. Somehow managed to make the perfect gravy, all the vegetables were delicious, and pudding amazing. I think it all tasted better because it was a happy recovery from the sadness and annoyance at the main meat going off when it should have been fine.

Two very different...

Late night in London, waiting for the night bus and I was ravenous! Bought a hotdog from a street cart and.it was heavenly!

More standard, was the miso cod a date ordered for me from Nobu. It's the only meal that has stopped me in my tracks and I savoured every, single, mouthful.