A meal you still think about...

[JackThayer]

I had the most wonderful lamb madras years ago. The sauce was just perfect and so creamy. The lamb was scrumptious and sadly I had had too many wines to enjoy it properly. I think about this curry just to tease myself every time I'm hungry 😩

A jungle lodge in Ollantaytambo, Peru, run by a Swiss man and a Thai woman. Wadi made the food fresh, Thai food with Peruvian/Amazonian ingredients. A Som Tum that was just the most delicious thing to lunch on with a cold beer, followed by a walk in the humid air to a cool swimming pool, then to the hammock read and fall asleep. Perfect food memory ❤️

A sublime Beef Stroganoff in Malta.

Eating fish and chips walking home from a late shift on a freezing December evening. I was a nurse on a very busy ICU and hadn't had a break or eaten anything for 10 + hours.
That was over 20 years ago and I still remember it as the most delicious meal I've ever had. Both fish and chips were and cooked to perfection.

An omelette made on a hiil in Greece somewhere. I was young and hungry and this place just served omelletes, I don't even think it was an actual restaurant. It tasted fruity, of olive oil, and was served with fresh tomatoes and olives.

My grandmother's roast beef and fried chicken.

A Marco Pierre White meal about 30 years ago.

A cheese board in a restaurant in Monaco. Also the potato dauphonoise in another restaurant in Monaco, and a St Joseph wine in a 3rd restaurant there.

Mum's pork chops.

An Italian roadside restaurant that served a pasta sauce made of ground pistachio.

My DH made an amazing curry last week. We are not great or even good cooks but this was just the tastiest meal ever.

I've had a lot of nice meals over the last few years as restaurants have upped their game so much and also as veganism is becoming more popular it brings with it their fabulous use of spices. But the above are my top picks.

Tuna tempura at a restaurant in Adelaide, it was a very thick piece of tuna so designed to be rare in the middle. It was amazing.

Duck and English mustard in a Japanese restaurant in the city of London

My Mum's tandoori chicken. One of my aunts married an Indian man who taught my Mum this recipe. She didn't have a tandoor (I mean, it was Ireland in the 1970s) so it was cooked in the oven, but it was still great. She also had to go spice shopping anytime we visited the UK because there was no chance of picking them up in the supermarket at home.

Tuna at the Kona Cafe in WDW about 20 years ago

Red Snapper with a banana sauce at Hoar Cross Hall, about 20 years ago when it was still run by old Mr Joynes.

Fillet Steak with pepper sauce at The Rectory in Boduan, North Wales, mid 1980s. Me and DH had just met and we went there nearly every weekend.

After a horrendous (cut short) holiday in the Dominican where the chicken was raw in the middle and flies flew out of fish when they cut it open it has to be the meal in the plane on the way home. The lovely cabin crew gave us two meals each, roast beef in red wine sauce, mash and green beans and chicken in a peppercorn sauce with roasties and peas. I think I ate half the bread rolls on the plane too 😂

When I was a kid, we missed our flight to a holiday as my mum, unusually, got the time wrong (thought it was 2.30, and it was actually 12.30). Very luckily in the height of summer to a popular destination there were 4 seats the next morning from Birmingham. My mum knew a chef who had just opened a posh hotel near there and we were able to get two rooms that night.

I was 9 and a super-fussy eater, so of course I didn't eat anything on their very fashionable continental menu for dinner, so the chef asked what I did like and ended up preparing a dish of chicken breast with a side of tagiatelle. It remains one of the best things I've ever eaten.

Chilli mushrooms and rice at a street stall in Singapore. Heavenly

1. the salad dressing on some plain lettuce leaves in a restaurant in little Italy NYC in 2011. I wish I'd asked what it was.

2. the tomato soup my day nursery used to serve for lunch. I can't remember the taste but the smell I remember vividly.

3. a burrito from a Mexican takeaway that only delivers to a small catchment area. It was a family I used to babysit for but they moved house. No collection. It was so delicious and spicy.

Amazing fish and chips at a lovely seafront restaurant in Fuertuventura in 2007 and a pasta dish in a restaurant in Clapham in 2010.

A huge bowl of nachos made with tortilla chips, lettuce, fresh onion and tomato, refried beans, grated cheese, sour cream and guacamole, prepared by an American friend in the UK for a year So tasty, thank you Aleesha!

A platter of tomato-ey spaghetti and seafood served at an upmarket restaurant on Mykonos. It had fresh and tender lobster, crab and sea urchins amongst much else. OMG heavenly.

Fried cheese salad in Spain with fresh fruit and skerry vinegar. Probably one of the nicest things I have ever eaten.

Really loving these..

1. Going to Harry Ramsdens as a kid with grandparents.. eating fish and chips and ice cream and just feeling so full and loving the experience of eating out which was rare for us..
2. Eating my own Yorkshire puddings for the first time.. getting them right and feeling proud🥰🙂 .. insert all significant meals here - first Christmas dinner, first birthday cake for children etc..
3. a delicious pad Thai in Bangkok.. street food at its best. I was poor, it was cheap and so so good.

Years ago I had a spring vegetable risotto in a restaurant in Melbourne, Derbyshire. I can't remember the name of the restaurant but I can remember every bit of that risotto. It was like ambrosia!

Nicest meal - home made Steak and kidney pie at White House services, Okehampton (aka The Pie Cafe). Good food doesn't have to be fancy food.
weird meal - my grandmother's stew - made with liver, lentils and vegetables
Worst meal - my grandmother's hard boiled egg in tinned yellow curry sauce on top of kale.
close runner up - toasted ham, pineapple, cheese and onion sandwich when I was 3 months pregnant. I was very sick afterwards and can't eat that combination now.

My grandmother was brought up in a household with a cook. She went to India just before WWII and they had Indian servants. She came back to England at the beginning of the war with no money, rationing, and no knowledge of how to cook. Bless her but she never really learned! She did made an amazing sponge cake though.

She really was/still is such a wonderful woman. She has so much love in her heart.

I think it was in Maze/Mezzo or something like that. Can only remember the mash potato - buttery and garlicky. Yum!

My first visit to Belfast - steak dinner at Beatrice Kennedy's (restaurant no longer open).

Wheaten bread for starter which was soft and tasty with the tastiest butter.
Steak was the best I've ever had, sliced like butter and the red wine which accompanied the meal was fantastic.

A massive plate of grilled king prawns in a chilli sauce in Mozambique. No sides, just that.

I'd been flown down there to complete a contract negotiation with two colleagues and these were eaten after 48 hours of no sleep or food bar some biscuits.

I've never enjoyed a meal so much!

Creole chicken in a texmex restaurant that is now a laundrette 😫

No idea how to replicate it.