Memorable meals of your life ............................food snobbery and one upmanship strongly encouraged. No nugget and twizzler talk here please ladies!

[moondog]

God I'm a greedy cow and there is a dearth of good food talk at present.

For moi they are as follows...

Mumus in the South Pacific where I grew up.
A big pit is dug and meanwhile stones heated in a fire. Meanwhile pork,chicken,fish, taro and sweet potatoes are placed in banana leaf parcels,usually with coconut cream.Then they are put in the pit,covered with stones and left to steam for hours.
This was special celebratory food and utterly divine.

A picnic in a pine forest en route from Perigord to the Alps to see my sister.
It was only bread,pate and red wine but never have these tasted so good.

A shashlik (bbq) in the orchard of a Russian dacha with the family of a university student I taught.
A warm spring day after a very long cold winter.
Pork kebabs,marinated in oil,vinegar,bay and juniper,tomatoes,rye bread and vodka,followed by a sauna in which we wore funny little woolen hats to encourage the sweating and beat each other with birch branches.

moondog mumus sounds amazing

la residencia, majorca was a lovely occasion for me and lovely food. back in 2001.

and an american friend of lebanese descent cooked fabuluos food one night in her apartment whilst at college in london. i must seek her out actually

Frenchgirl, it was very nice. The staff were always around making sure you had everything. If you didn't like any of the fillings left on the plate they would just bring you a plate of what you did like.

It's my biggest brag & I use whenever I can! Hope you get there someday & enjoy yourselves!

I had afternoon tea at the ritz at about 4 months pregnant...stuffed to the gills...made it back to the office in a cab and threw the whole sorry lot up...what a waste of 40 quid. Felt starving again after 15 mins!!!!:o

My favourite meal had to be the lobster mash at asia de cuba (sp?) as a big mash fan sticking some lobster in it was heaven!

Oh and the Kew Grill was my last nice dinner out! Pretty good - if you are a hardened carnivor!

been thinking about taking dh to Kew Grill. Was the steak worth it?

lol sue at your companion 'having no business being with you'
Must have added to the moment eh??

Frenchgirl,my sister lived in Arles for many years.God the market was to die for...

Actually,some of the best meals of my life have been here in Van in Turkey in the roughest little lokantas in the back streets,surrounded by men all fagging it and fingering worrry beads,as the odd headscarved woman scuttles by.

Grilled lamb,freshly made flat bread,bit of rough salad and a glass of ayran (yoghurt drink) all for about £1,served by the kindest nicest people in the world.

When I was a student in London (10 years ago) used to go to a uni canteen just behind Oxford Street that served Malaysian food to students (but anyone could go)
That was bloody good-and cheap.

Lobster chowder and blueberry pie at a lighthouse a long walk away from anywhere in Novia Scotia.

Big chunks of lobster in fragrant soup, follwed by the pie, small wild bluberries, heady with scent, underneath perfect golden melting crisp buttery pasty, and pure cream homeade ice cream.

A Sardinian seafood spaghetti recipe in a rustic hotel on the Costa Verde in Sardina. Really rich sauce, studded with good quality mussels and meaty prawns and sauce, washed down with crackllingly crisp Vermontino.

Deliscious little dishes in the bar bit of Club Gascon.

Yes - Kew Grill was great. But you HAVE to like meat! I think there were two fish options if you were lucky (apologies AWT if I'm deterring veggies from yr restaurant). I really really enjoyed it. Not been to the Glasshouse yet..sounds like that should be the next stop!

Crab brains and shrimp eggs at a tiny little yakitori in Tokyo.

Barbecue brisket served on newspapers with pickles, bread rolls and a lot of napkins at The Wagon Wheel in Lufkin, Texas.

The seafood platter at Nick's on Darling Harbour in Sydney.

A huge platter of spicy crawfish with ice cold beer while listening to live jazz in New Orleans. Again, lots of napkins.

Blackberries, warm right off the vine until I felt ill behind my Papa's church in Nacogdoches, Texas.

Lots of good memories.

oooh, the simplest and best fillet steak in a backstreet bucheron in Lyons- perfect smoky charring, bedst steak, deep complex 'jus' and a glass of fabulous burgundy..

A platter of seafood served at a restaurant on a hillside overlooking the bay at Wellington, NZ.

Glasshouse is fabulous - great food. Have been lucky enough to go there quite a bit this year and I've always had great meals. Tables are slightly too close together for it to be a 100% fab experience but that's me being very picky! I like a bit of privacy and space when going out for a great meal rather than the ability to hobnob on everyone else's conversation (though this can be fun!).

I've had some truly "historic" memorable meals, especially in France & Italy but the best has to be dear ol' Dad's blueberry pie, warm from the oven with vanilla ice-cream slowly melting on the top. MMMMM!

Had a fabolous (and huge) platter of "fruite de mer" in a lovely restaraunt in Etretat.

First plate of mortadella after 18 months of non-meat eating. I'm sure mortadella is v cheap and nasty but to me it was Flavour City.

Fresh pizza from the bakers below the classroom in Florence, out of the oven at 11 am, finished by 11.02am - every weekday for three months.

Oh this is a brilliant thread!

Favourite meal ever was during a 2 hour lunch break from uni. A friend and I ended up in the Carluccio's Neal Street posh restaurant in Covent Garden instead of one of the canteen style one's which are dotted around everywhere (which is where we thought we were going!). It was too late to turn back as we had already asked for a glass of wine on the way to our table, so by the time we sat down, and saw the table cloths, the rows of cutlery and the prices of food, we knew we were in trouble! However, after £75 of delicious grub and a bottle of wine later, we giggled all the way back over waterloo bridge to our pharamcology lecture (not bad for a pair of student nurses!) She had venison and I had rabbit and the highlight of the meal was Antonio Carluccio himself bringing the posh bread you get in this type of restaurant to our table and asking us if we were enjoying the meal! It was fab!

The Fat Duck in Bray.

first time i had foie gras in a great little restaurant in a historic little town in the south of france.

a great meal i had with d in tuscany. Food was great, but can't really remember what I had, know it was good, but what i really remember was how much we laughed and how happy i felt.

the lobster i had last week in sherringham. lottie went into charming mode and made us laugh so much, dd2 was sleeping and we ate outside in the sun, even though it was really quite cold, it was a wonderful, perfectly happy afternoon and a great memory, as well as very good food.

agree - this is a fab thread. Lovely to read the poists and great to relive my memories, thanks moondog

This is a fab thread! Here are my offerings:

1. Freshly caught whole shrimp, deep fried and eaten while watching the sunset over Ilha do Mel (Honey Island) in southern Brazil. It's a tiny island - half of it is a nature preserve, there are no cars or roads, and the generator run electricity comes on for an hour or two in the evening!
2. Maison au Quatre Saisons - in my old company our bosses took us to some excellent places! This was for two colleagues 30th birthdays. We had a private room, seven-course meal, Raymond Blanc served the birthday cake and stayed to chat for half an hour, then got the hotel manager to give us a tour of the hotel and grounds.
3. The Waterside Inn in Bray - another outing with my old work, to celebrate the bosses working together for 10 years. Amazing food!
4. My 29th birthday, with best friend and small group of others, in Dahab on the Red Sea coast of Egypt, eating bedouin style (lying on carpets and big cushions) and being served a surprise birthday dessert of pancakes and fresh fruit.
5. My first Brazilian "churrasco" (BBQ), with close friends and thier families in a small town just outside Sao Paulo.

Whilst on holiday in St Lucia went to watch a "moon rise" on a beautiful secluded beach. Laid on a lounger eating just caught lobster &
snapper while sipping champagne, Heaven.

I KNEW this thread would be started by our own galloping gourmet moony

chilli crab and fish head curry on the balcony of a malaysian house over a river in Trengannu

The best ever breakfast:

Eating delicious eggs benedict on the island of Sanibel, watching two manatee playing in the sea

The best ever lunch:

I have to say it was a burger and fries in a fantastic "joint" in New York. The burger was huge and meaty and juicy and really was 100% steak mince! I ate mine with my paws. Dh used a knife and fork whilst the locals looked on in bemused fashion saying, "well the English are eccentric ya know".

The best ever dinner:

I can't choose between:

A summer evening at a little Italian restaurant right on the beach in St Ives. The pasta was simple but perfect. Lots of good wine. A man was carving a unicorn head in the sand. It was just me and my Mum - a perfect evening. God I miss her so much.

Another meal at a beachside restaurant, this time on Praslin Island (Seychelles) with dh - the most fantastic array of seafood dishes and an incredibly romantic setting.

Dinner at The Supper Club in Amsterdam, lolling on huge white beds - what a lovely way to eat great food and drink good wine.

Don't remember the food but the wine was fantastic at the re-opening night of the Fenice in Venice. The whole event was totally wonderful, dressed up to the nines, great company, great location, great food (what ever it was) and great wine.

I have had wine, so feel I can reveal......

smoked salmon wrapped round my boyfriend's erect penis

The lemon juice stung a bit apparently.

twas many moons ago.

don't tell DH - it wasn't him!