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.

Last year we were staying in REGENT BEVERLEY WILSHIRE HOTEL in Beverley Hills LA {The Pretty Woman Hotel}

It was DH birthday so we had a birthday afternoon tea with very posh teas and a complimentary bottle of champagne and DS was given cocktails

Anyway when we went for dinner I had TRUFFLEs and we asked for a bottle of water and we were given a WATER MENU LIST like a wine list

It listed all the water they had and its various qualities and tastes and the regions that they had come from

It was so deffo brill and very funny too

Did they have ducks in the pool in the foyer RT?

rofl gingerbear

sounds like great fun Kanga - I do like a bit of ott opulence

no a huge flower display and chandelier

The bathroom was the size of a regular hotel bedroom

We had a rolls royce laid on for us to drive us around wherever we wanted

They booked us into a restaurnat in beverley hills 90210 one night and the Rolls took us and brought us back again and everyone was lookinga t us when it stopped at the lights

It was sooooooooooooo deffo brill

puff, it was a bit like a Beef Wellington

fnar fnar

So which hotel in Beverly Hills has the resident ducks? Am I imagining this?
off to google

gingerbear

\link{http://www.regenthotels.com/hoteldirectory/hotelbio.jsp?hotelCode=RILAX&hotelBrandCode=REG&key=hoteldirectory.info.&submenu=hoteldirectory.info.highlight.&origin=&backURI=&maintitle=Hotel+Overview\regent beverley wilshire}

Ah, tis the Peabody Hotel in Memphis that has the daily duck march.
Gasp at the Hotel RT - it is beautiful.

You do know that Moony will be back in the morning to berate us for going off topic??????

\link{http://www.peabodymemphis.com/peabody_hotels/the_peabody_ducks.cfm\here look at ducks}

It certainly is the best hotel we have stayed in and the food was out of this world, and the service was sooooooooooo amazing, and they all knew your name etc.

Deffo brill @ ducks

did you mean to say deffo BILL @ ducks??? [groan]

I'e been lucky enough to eat at many a fine restaurant - but all of my 'best' moments are from much more humble surroundings:)

My first is a pan of buckies - whelks to the southeners- cooked over a beach fire (no bbqs in those days) at kintore in Aberdeen.

My second is bacon sarnies cooked over an open fire at Loch end - actually many things cooked on an open fire at loch end - we were there every sunday afternoon for the whole of my childhood from recollection:)

My third, which moves the circle on a notch, is building a beach fire in cornwall for my children and cooking dinner on it. We did of course serve the food with copious amounts of champagne

So I suppose the lesson for me is that whilst sophisticated food has its place, in reality it is the experiences that attach to that that makes it memorable:)

And bu*er Bu*er it, it makes me cry remembering it all:(:(:(

Rack of lamb on a lovely white plate on a boat in Milford Sound with a perfect sunset.

Raspberry Pavlova somewhere in Shrewsbury about an hour before Dh said he'd marry me.

I've stayed there two RTK, we took DD and her friend post GCSE's and they loved it. My aunt lives in Beverley Hiils and is very well known, so we had the best centre table at Spago. It was funny everyone looking to see who we were, and the girls spotting all the film celebs at the same time!

sat in the hippy field on a glorious day (honest)at glastonbury eating a banana fritter

I hope to have at least one of my more memorable meals this weekend - dh and I are going to be CHILDLESS and are going to a chateau in the Medoc for the weekend. I will report back. \link{http://www.relaischateaux.com/en/search-book/hotel-restaurant/mirambeau/\like this one: sigh}

Bento Box after diving on a deserted beach in Palau, Micronesia.

And then from one degree to another

Fish and Chips sitting on the harbour wall in Mevagissy watching the boats come in.

Posh Fish and Chips in Jordans in Darling Harbour, Sydney

mine has got to be the sausage roll i had whilst in my pushchair in the summer of 1974

Sweating in a T-shirt in a seafood dive in Singapore eating pepper/chilli/steamed Sri Lankan crab, grilled stingrays, oyster omelette, dough fritters tuffed with squid, deep fried tiger prawns .... - I weep from missing it so much.

Chef's degustacion (sp?) at Hunan restaurant in Pimlico. Surroundings were simple but food divine.

Local pasta in a backstreet restaurant in Sicily.

Thai Fusion in a restaurant in Kuala Lumpur - chef was on tour.

Pot noodles with chilli sauce after a dive in Sipadan, East Malaysia!

Gordon Ramsey Chelsea - absolutely delicious food and fantastic service. You can practically taste his Michelin stars. Also entertaining watching the other customers - only a small restaurant so you really get to overhear conversations. Loved the ladies who lunch. Wish I could afford to go back!

Oh, what a lovely thread, all these stories. Quite a lot of them seem to relate to Before We Had Kids I notice...

I can almost taste blu's steak [drool] and it reminds me of many happy dinners at the end of the drive up through France to get the night ferry from Ouistreham - the Boeuf Ferre in Caen. Excellent steaks, a good Jaboulet Cotes du Rhone avec...miam.

Not to mention the crab, brandy and cream soup we had at a beach cafe in St Helens on the Isle of Wight when I was pregnant with ds. Chilly sunny day, looking out over the Solent, ds enjoying the food too...

edam, that being able to eavesdrop plus, reminds me a bit of two massive queeny show-offs holding the floor in the Pecheurs d'Etaples in Boulogne...lots of flowery talk of darling Tony and lovely Greg (Sher and Doran). Arm-waving, the lot. And neither of them was Simon Callow, much to my surprise.