Thanks, Kelvin, for this tag. What a fun way to talk about food! A warning, though: I have been lucky enough to visit some really nice restaurants, and I want to share the experiences, but I may sound like a name-dropping douchebag. Just remember that I am one of the masses who has to call for reservations 2 months in advance. And I'm only going to go with 20, since I'm so very sesquipedalian. In no particular order:
1. Breakfast at a friend's cottage, in my twenties. Always the same routine. 8 or 10 of us would wake up around noon, hung over, but before we'd start another day of hanging out at the beach and drinking beer, we'd have a big communal breakfast. Jane would scramble a dozen eggs; Becky would toast up a loaf of bread; Dave would fry up a pound of bacon; I would slice potatoes and fry them. Someone else would pour the OJ, and another would set the table. We'd serve all the greasy goodness to each other straight out of the frying pan, sit around the table, and start mythologizing the fun of the previous night. We left the table grateful for the fine job grease does at soaking up liquor and ready for the first beer of the new day.
2. Dim Sum at some place in Scarborough maybe called Perfect Restaurant. Everything you could ask for- crispy, doughy, good fillings, great tea, and 3 of us ate like kings for $20. Nice to be able to look at the bill and say "This one's on me!"
3. The Vendome restaurant at the Ritz, Paris. More for the theatre of it, but the food was incredible as well. We ordered from a very attentive waiter, who left the table. A few minutes later, the Sommelier came by, aware of what we had ordered, to make wine selections that matched our meals. (It drives Peter batshit when we're at restaurants and they want you to order a bottle of wine before you've had a chance to look at the menu.) Then a rolling Champagne cart came by, stocked with bottles of Ritz Champagne on ice in a large silver tub, and a glass was offered.
When each course is served, 2 waiters bring your dishes to the table, covered with silver domes, which they simultaneously remove with dramatic flair. Seconds later, a "sauce" waiter comes by, ready to offer a delectable complement to your dish. The food was almost beside the point by then.
At some point during the meal, a cheese cart was rolled by. I loved the fact that this cart was clearly a piece of antique French furniture, with a marble top, that had been refitted with wheels. We were offered all the cheese we wanted. At one point, I asked for something strong. The Fromage Guy lifted a glass dome from over a piece of cheese, and cut me a slice. The odour was overpowering. I barely had a tiny piece to my mouth when I could feel my nose hairs tingling. It was all I could do to swallow that little piece. Peter wouldn't try it, and he loves cheese. Moral of that story- strong cheese in France is stronger than strong cheese in Canada.
This is getting awfully long, so let me just wrap up by saying that the decor, the history, and the incredible Frenchness of everything made this meal paramount. (Oh, and when you have to go to the bathroom, a staff member walks you back into the hotel where the discreet but flamboyant bathrooms are, and waits for you by the restaurant door to walk you back to your seat!)
4. 9 course tasting menu at Babbo. Word of caution- if you order the accompanying wine tasting, you will receive a full glass of each. 9 glasses. Ouch.
5. My great Aunt Elsie's roast beef with Yorkshire pudding. Sunday supper was always a production when I was growing up, with lots of family. No one made this particular meal like my Aunt Elsie and Uncle Jim. Great roast, riced potatoes, lots of veggies, (ok, they were overcooked, but it's my heritage!), and crispy, light, Yorkshire pudding to soak up the incredible gravy. Uncle Jim's shortbread for dessert was a yummy treat.
6. Lobsters in the dark. Again, at a cottage, we were all sitting around a bonfire eating chips and drinking, when one friend wandered over a few cottages and struck up a conversation. He was there most of the night. Our fire was almost out when he returned with a bunch of foil parcels. His charm had won him the leftovers at the party he crashed. I ran into the cottage,nuked a pound of butter, and ran back out with it. We all sat there in the dark, working our way through succulent whole lobsters, pulling at the meat and shell with nothing but our fingers. It was such an unexpected treat.
7. Wendy's Junior Bacon Cheeseburger and Fries. I'm just sayin'.
8. My dad's lasagna. So much cheese and meat you could barely lift the pan onto the table.
9. Any meal with the Williams-Sonoma people. We all love the best, and we talk about the food as much as we eat it.
10. Mini truffle panini and Prosecco at Procacci in Florence. We'd never heard of it, but we managed to find an extremely cute place with the most incredible truffle everything, all served up with some fruity Prosecco. Cute green marble tables, and the endless variety of the teeny weeny panini made you want to stay all day.
11. The dinners served by surly Anna at our inn in Montalcino. Actually, she wasn't surly at all, but had been labeled as such by plenty of American tourists who took her lack of English skills as a personal affront. But the meals she made us 2 nights in a row were spectacular, as were the wine pairings offered by her lovely husband. Oh, and the view...
12. The White Trash dinner party at Daphne's. Spushi (that's Spam sushi) made by Kelvin was a standout. I believe we were required to use a can of Campbell's soup in all our recipes. I think I contributed my Auntie Marg's Green Bean Casserole, the mother of all White Trash dishes. All served with a nice box of wine!
13. Mom's Christmas turkey. Not too much of mom on this list, since cooking was not her strong suit, but she would make a Herculean effort at Christmas to get this meal right, and came up with some far-out (for Burlington in the 80s) side dishes like Squash Souffle.
14. Annual birthday dinners for Alison and Sarah. I love how they indulge. As Sarah says, "It's just not a dinner at Lori's unless I leave feeling uncomfortable, and with my top button undone."
15. The first dinner party I hosted where I didn't burst into tears before the guests arrived. It was not as long ago as I wish.
16. Steve's cooking is a class all it's own. Always done with love, and usually with saturated fat. He can make anything special, like homemade potato chips.
17. Tapas at Coca. Better than Cava.
18. Cupcake hunting in New York. Magnolia, Buttercup, Cupcake Cafe, Amy's Bread, Joe's Bakery, Crumbs...
19. Kelvin inspires me to add this- when I was a kid, my mom was making a stew of some kind, and the pan had a lid on it. My dad always considered himself the better cook, so he kept checking what she was doing, opening the oven, taking the lid off the pan, etc. At some point he set the lid on the counter, unknowingly on top of a bar of soap that had been next to the sink. The soap stuck to the lid, and went into the stew when he put the lid back on. Next time someone checked, the pan was full of bubbles and sludge, and there was a bar of Ivory floating in the middle of the stew. Pizza was ordered.
20. Any time I eat with friends and/or family, I consider it a special meal.
