What and where was the best meal you've ever eaten?

[TheDuchessOfNorksBride]

The risotto on What's For Dinner????? reminded me that I once ate the most divine Roast Quail on the creamiest risotto at Claridges (pre-Ramsay).

And then COVs liver-love stirred memories of fried chicken livers with bacon and pinenuts in a crunchy basket thing at the Green Olive in Little Venice. Would love to eat that again.

So?

It's all heavily biased towards pasta & seafood & Italy!

SEA - we used to have a lovely beef casserole with dumplings at parents home too. Casserole I can do, dumplings I can't!

Bit ashamed to admit this, but it was Lobster Thermidor, in the Masons Arms - that pub where the landlord got fined 6k last week for allowing smoking/smoking himself in his pub.

That was, until he said 'That was swimming around fifteen minutes ago'

The buffet dinner at the Bangkok Peninsula.

Absolutely bloody amazing.

It was a lovely little restaurant in a tiny mountain village outside Granada.
Gorgeous sunday afternoon (possibly mothers day?) with DP and our parents, beautiful views and the only noise from outside was the bleating of sheep.
We had Morcilla (like black pudding sausages), Chorizo and salad to start.
Then the softest, sweetest slow-cooked lamb shanks ever.
For dessert we had apple tart which probably still stands as the best dessert I have ever had (and I've had quite a few), nothing fancy but done to perfection.

We have been back since and had the exact same meal but this time there were incidents involving DPs dad threatening to disown him, his mum locking herself (in tears) in the toilet and me telling my mum to 'shut the fuck up' .

Somehow it felt less magical second time around .
(DP and I ate our apple tart sitting outside on the grass surrounded by the sheep )

JV - 2nd time around doesn't sound so good! At least the sheep were pleasant company!

On the first evening of our honeymoon, dh and I ate at a harbourside restaurant in Calvi, on Corsica. The food was excellent (Corsican charcuterie and seafood) but what I really remember was the wine - local muscat and Patrimonio. It tasted of the air - rosemary, salt, lavender.
It was Euro 1996 and we could hear people watching the match in bars across the port, everyone was sunkissed and smiling.
It was an evening to remember

In portugal on the quayside
red wine, salad, bread, salty potatoes and grilled sardines,
It was simple fresh and delicious

Most of the food we had on our honeymoon in Thailand was divine. Whole BBQd snapper in a sweet, spicy chilli marinade... mmmmm. Caught and bbq'd in front of us on the beach. So unbelievably fresh and delicious.

Had an amazing meal of langoustine and lots of champagne in Paris on my 30th birthday, too.

The tasting menu at The Fat Duck was pretty amazing.

Also a meal DP and I had at a restaurant in Naples that was really hard to find was pretty spectacular as well.

On the cheaper side (although Naples was v. good value) the smoked haddock fishcakes at the Anstruther Fish Bar are fabulous.

Catching our own tuna and then telling chef how to cook/serve it at v posh hotel in Indian Ocean is a meal I won't ever forget, but I have to agree that Bangkok Penn also does a very fine buffet. And Taillevent in Paris also breathtaking. And the Mudhouse on waihiki island near Aukland

Oh I could ponce on and on, but I am now so sad and nostalgic for my old life that I will go off and cry for a bit instead. These days it's Pizza Express and Cafe Rouge.

we had a fantastic dinner at La residencia hotel in Deia on our honeymoon.

"but what I really remember was the wine"
Gosh Marina, I'm shocked...

Now I want to go somewhere
a) posh in nice clothes (not maternity) and
b) somewhere sunny and sandy.
And eat almost everything on this thread.

To be honest, my favourite meal isn't even poncy. It's brunch in New York (lots of places, too many to list). I just love the fact that breakfast / brunch is a proper affair. And that you can order Mimosas with your bacon and pancakes with no shame

there was a thread like this before and it just made me feel

Mines not very exciting either but at the time it seemed marvellous. Sitting outdoors in Soller we had what we now refer to as the Soller picnic - Babybels, lovely fresh bread and olives washed down with San miguel.

zippi, [http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/4/519894?ts=1209128998486 this]] should make you feel less envious

Every time we eat at our favourite restaurant is's lovely
3 courses for £15.95 - very nice, poshish food, decent sized portions and the menu changes every month so there's always something different on

Duh

Oh MrsMattie I love the brunches in the US. Just spent a week in San Francisco and had some wonderful ones.

afternoon tea at claridges with my best friend - champagne and as many cakes and scones as you can eat fab fab fab

I do a lot of eating out (via work) but I think the best meal will be an alchemy that goes a bit beyond just decent food.

Before DCs we were driving back from the South of France is a sports car (how glamorous that sounds!). We had not booked anywhere for the night and were tired, windswept and dirty. We were on the outskirts of Dijon and plunged into a chaotic one way system at about 6pm on a Friday. It was horrendous. Everything was full. We were, of course, bickering openly. We were just resigning ourselves to stay in a motel, when there was one last place to try from a Micelin guidebook - a small, well reviewed restaurant with a Michelin rosette in a village a few km outside Dijon, that had about 8-10 rooms.

When we got there about 6.30pm they had just had a cancellation - both a room and a table for dinner, so they were as pleased to see us as we were to see them. We could have wept. They then said, perhaps before you even go upstairs you could do with a drink, and they pointed us into the garden and brought us 2 of the most gigantic, darkest kirs you have ever seen (cassis is local speciality). We sat in this pleasant ly scrappy little garden with our drinks with chickens running around and the kitchen doors open with the sounds oand the smells of the chefs preparing for the night's meal.

After we had had a shower etc we had dinner and it was fantastic. It was just like your ideal French meal. Everything was local, immaculately cooked. All the other guest were just local families etc (there was a group of about 10 I guess celebrating someone's 60th birthday).

It really wasn't a fancy surrounding, but the food was absolutely excellent, made even better by the knowledge that we had snatched triumph from the jaws of disaster and could very eaily have been in a Formule 1!

I've always loved kir ever since then!

What's limencello? It sounds like something I would like but I've never heard of it.

I once had, at a friend's house, spaghetti sprinkled with a really expensive balsamic vinegar and parmesan. It was delicious. I tried to recreate it at home with my cheapo vinegar but it tasted vile.