What's the best food you have ever been served at a dinner party?

[MairzyDoats]

Doesn't need to be fancy (although fine if it is) but I'd like to know about the most delicious food you've ever been presented with. I'm hosting in late November and I would like it to be memorable (for the right reasons!)

I'll start - I went to a friend's house for a casual evening - she had been to the Dorset coast that day and brought back the biggest, juiciest shell on prawns with her. She served them very simply fried in garlic butter with crusty baguette to mop up the juices and for some reason they were one of the best things I've ever eaten.

I am also interested in this. The best thing I have ever been served was Turbot. It was cooked in the pan just before we ate it. I think Turbot is quite difficult to get hold of and expensive. There were only 4 of us eating, so I think this was 1 large Turbot.

Pan-fried sea bass in a pepper sauce. Was just so tasty!

Not at all a pudding person, but a friend grilled some perfectly ripe, but not over sweet nectarines with a drizzle of honey and a splash of Ameretto, it had a sprinkling of brown sugar on top. Everything I've written just sounds seweey and sickly I know but honestly, it was delicious, so intensely fruity.

Not a dinner party occasion but you did say the most delicious food you've ever been presented with....

Fresh battered calamari from a stall on the beach in Egypt. I placed my order, he waded into the sea and hoiked it out; and chopped it up and cooked it right there on the grill with salt and pepper and a big wodge of lemon.

Sounds from a few replies that simple very fresh seafood is the way to go!! If your culinary skills stretch to it of course 😁

https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/beef-fillet-horseradish-prosciutto

My DH cooked this one New Year. I think it's the best thing I have ever eaten. I bought a fillet of organic Aberdeen Angus from a farm gate in West Dorset. One of our guests said she'd never realised beef could be anything else apart from chewy. It cut like butter. Definitely use a meat thermometer!

Freshly shucked oysters with different vinaigrettes
Moules with homemade baguettes

paella on the beach in Barcelona with freshly caught seafood.... food in simple roadside cafés in Thailand and malaysia - fish in red curry sauce... simple fish curry from fresh river fish made by my great aunt in her house in a rural area...
wedding food in the many bengali weddings I've been too usually special Dhakai biryani and giant River prawns in a coconut curry sauce (nothing like the crap on offer in even the best restaurants in the UK)

I guess the theme is freshly caught seafood... or something cooked over wooden fire.

if you are looking for showstopping main courses, beef Wellington, a whole fish or short ribs work well.

BiL and SiL cooking a family meal for about 12 of us squeezing in around the kitchen table....game pie, mash and some steamed veg, I'd never had game pie before and it was lovely!

It was at a friend's home with her family, her brother cooked the most incredible seafood paella.

The one that comes to mind is this curried cauliflower cheese filo pie. I've had it twice as a vegetarian guest and each time it was the favourite dish of the meat eaters too.

Late MIL used to do a great Chicken Divan.

One of the most memorable meals I've had at a friend's house was a vegetarian spaghetti bolognese made with lentils. I've tried numerous recipes to see if I could recreate it over the years, with little success. We haven't seen them for a long time (friends of DH who he has now lost touch with) so I can't ask either.

Celeriac soup with a splash of balsamic vinegar on it and fresh croutons. I didn't think I liked celeriac but it was amazing.

A friend made crepe Suzette's once, first time for those too, nothing like boring pancakes!

So the dishes I remember were those that surprised me when I'd not expected to enjoy them.

A friend made the most amazing salmon wellington followed by perfect chocolate fondants. I aspire to be as good a cook as him.

I've just done the BBC burnt aubergine chili often recommended on here. You might be able to recreate the bolognese by adding a lot of basil and leaving out some of the other spices. The texture was great.

Someone once made me a really gorgeous fish pie, with lots of fish and loads of cheese in the mash. That was really lovely and I could have eaten the whole thing. Best pudding ever for a dinner party is chocolate bread pudding. Both really hearty and old fashioned, I know, but also practical as you can make ahead of time and they make great leftovers.

Puy lentils and feta.

My grandma had been in Cornwall and brought home some big fresh lobster for dinner

she cooked them with garlic butter and served them with a delicious herby green salad, steamed broad beans and rosemary roasted new potatoes and hunks of freshly baked bread with New Jersey gold butter for them and olive oil and rock salt for me.

we drank freezing cold champagne with it and ate in some beautiful rare evening sunshine on a balcony in england

we then washed it down with a beautiful milk chocolate tart crowned with fresh raspberries and sprinkled with shaved hazelnut and pistachio.

a very happy memory for me.

Filet steak and Maine lobster with lots of butter at Keens in NYC, absolutely sublime.

Posh surf n turf - Fillet steak and 1/2 lobster with lashings of garlic butter. Thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Can't even remember what the other sides were.

Just be sure your guests eat seafood before you decide to serve it though. Some people find seafood delicious, but for other people oysters, mussels and calamari etc would be a complete nightmare.

🤣 X-post, mine wasnt in anyway as exotic as NYC! It was in Glasgow in 2002 and cost £55 😱 just for the one main (before sides). I remember because our syndicate had a small lotto win and we were spending it all on a nice night out.

My Somali friend invited me round for a traditional meal, I don’t know the names of any of the dishes but we had a kind of fragrant spiced chicken stew with rice and banana, homemade samosas African style (different to Indian ones), a herb salad and homemade bread, followed by these little hollow donut type things served with dates and honey. It was all amazing!

My friend does the best cocktail sausages with a mustard glaze, yummy.

Years ago, I went to have dinner with a vegetarian couple. They were both excellent cooks. The starter was cheese souffle and then we had pasta stuffed with pine nuts, toasted almond flakes and spinach in a rich tomato sauce. Dessert was toffee, coffee mouse with strawberry shortbread. Needless to say everything, including the pasta and the cheese, was homemade from scratch. I tried to recreate this meal a couple of times but it never turned out as well.

One of the most memorable dinner party dishes I’ve had was this rich coq au vin at a friend's place. He’d been inspired by a French restaurant he’d visited and decided to go all out, slow-cooking it with plenty of wine, mushrooms, and garlic. The flavors were so deep, and the meat just melted off the bone—it was one of those meals that felt both impressive and comforting.