Your most Memorable (good!) Dining Experience

[Chef_SijmoN]

I dont have one specific time but i have to say that my 6 mothes in thailand that i return from 6days ago is the best food experions i've hade i love the street food in thailand especially North Thailand.

Pad Grapoa Gai is so good. Minced chicken with thai basil, chillis. VERY SPICY.

And then my absolut favourit that i dont know the name of.
Boiled pork lims and intestines served with steamd rice and boiled eggs and the stock from the meat.
slight sweet flavour.

[elizabethbryce@]

We were visiting Manila, Philippines and went to a restaurant by the sea called Wiener Vas (??) and tasted the most beautiful steak I ever have in my entire life so far...!! That was years ago now and I can still remember how it tasted.

[DC Sunshine]

The meal and the atmosphere make the memory

[ItsBasilThyme]

It's never the food that makes it memorable. It's the people, and the circumstances.

This is so true for me. My favorite and most memorable dining experience was not a fantastic culinary treat at all. My husband and I decided to tour the small southern towns surrounding our home-town (orlando), looking for the kind of small-town experience you hear about from your grandparents. We stumbled upon a cute little town called Deland, and ended up eating at what appeared to be the only sit-down restaurant in town called the Holiday House.

It wasn't long before we figured out why it was named that. The food was straight up, grandma's christmas dinner style. Slightly overcooked lamb with bright green mint jelly, ham, turkey and gravy, etc. Forget the arugula and candied pecans, the salad bar was cold pastas, jellos and such. The waitress, who had been there twenty years, took the time to tell us unprompted about the history of the restaurant, about the owners who wanted a place for families to gather and feel like every day was a holiday worth getting together. She told us about the portraits on the walls, all of which had been painted by the grandmotherly owner and featured her own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

I'm not going to say that the food was good. At least, it wasn't my kind of food. But at the same time, I think great food often transports you to a different place or time (like a rustic seafood pasta transports you to southern italy). This food definitely did that. And I will say that the desserts were amazing. We had carrot cake and cobbler and you could just taste that these traditional recipes had been passed down as family and church favorites through the years. My husband said that he half-expected his own grandmother to burst out from the kitchen in an apron.

My husband and I have had wonderful food throughout the americas and europe, but this tiny little restaurant in the middle of a small town is still the dining experience I remember most fondly.

[Mapiva]

I have had some great dining experiences living in NYC but the one that takes the cake was dining at Gordon Ramsay's Maze restaurant in midtown. It was my husband's birthday and he wanted to go because we're huge fans of his BBC shows. I was a little nervous because I once was a fan of Bobby Flays, but it turned out his restaurant was disappointing. I didn't want the same thing to happen after Maze but I gave it a try anyway.

It turns out I had nothing to worry about at all. I have tremendous respect for chef Ramsay and the dining experience we had was outstanding. The service was impeccable! There was never any need to try to get someone's attention, they had someone standing at the end of the dining room who's job was to only watch the diners and be available for their needs.

The food was out of this world. We ordered the tasting menu which was comprised of 6 small dishes, most of which I didn't think I would like at all. The first dish was a beet salad and it was my favorite dish, regardless of the fact that I had never liked beets before. Then came my favorite - seared scallops with curry powder on a bed of pureed cauliflower and streaks of raisin puree. Next came my favorite kind of risotto - mushroom and it was perfectly cooked and seasoned. My husband enjoyed a lamb chop with mashed potatoes while I had a duo of beef. One was a filet of brandt beef and the other was a braised short rib wrapped in smoked cow's tongue. Divine! The next 2 courses were dessert and very good.

I was also happy to see that the maitre d' was the same from Kitchen Nightmares, the frenchman he brings into the show from time to time. If anyone has an opportunity to visit one of Gordon Ramsay's many restaurants please do so, you will not be disappointed.

[geese4u]

We were in Costa Rica, and took a boat to a small secluded island that turned out to be not so secluded. Before most of the tourists showed up, we were basically alone on the beach. One of the exceptions was an old shirtless man sitting on a log near the tree line. He had taped up glasses, about half of his teeth, brown leathery skin, rough hands with tobacco stained finger tips, and a big knife in his hand. There was a Javelina (small wild pig type critter) laying in the sand near him, and a pile of oyster and scallop shells at his feet. On the log, there were unopened oysters stacked up, a couple of limes, a bottle of hot sauce, and half an onion. I immediately tried to strike up a conversation with him in broken spanish. We managed to communicate enough for me to find out that he was there to sell fresh oysters, and that they were 500 Colones (1.00) apiece.

We parked our gear close to him, and started purchasing oysters. He did everything with that big knife, and never seemed to struggle. He would open 2-3 oysters, and set them aside. Then he would pick up the onion, and lightly but very quickly bounce the knife off of the cut side of the onion, creating a very uniform crosshatch pattern. A very thin across the top yielded the finest diced onion that I have seen. After putting a little on each oyster, he would give it a squeeze of lime juice, and a shot of hot sauce.

We ate every one that he had, chasing them with ice cold Imperial beer. He walked to a small boat on the beach, and went to dive for more. When he came back he had a few scallops mixed in with the sack of oysters, and we enjoyed those as well. It was the finest lunch I have ever eaten.

[oleglipkin]

You'll not believe it : Coming back from India, our flight was overbooked and we had to buy ourselves a return ticket (later refunded) and there was only an Air France 1st class. We had what I felt (after India) the most memorable dinner ever, with a bottle of Mercurey (Burgundy), Champagne at aperitif and everything... Can't remember what we ate but it was gorgeous...