Best food memory from 2011?

The highest light for me was being able to teach people the foods and cooking methods of our colonial founders, and watching their faces when they sampled it.

Got a really good dinner at Coconut Paradise in Shanghai this summer.  Most Thai restaurants that will give you spicy-hot food -- the usual "how hot" game in U.S. Thai places.   Coconut Paradise used plenty chilies, but *different* ones -- different dishes lit up different parts of the mouth.  

My sons new grlfriend is from Ohio. We're in Scotland. She's staying with us and wanted to make french toast casserole for Christmas day breakfast...Sounded disgusting (Bread and butter pudding with bacon) in the UK casserole = a stew-type concoction with meat vegies and gravy. We are now enlightened and know casserole in USA simply means the dish it's cooked in

It was amazing! Okay it was fundamentally B&B pud, but fluffy/crispy and topped with pecans, sticy brown sugar, loads of butter and a side of crispy bacon, a bowl of blueberries and peaches with yogurty dressing.

This was so different to anything we'd ever had before. I guess its a regular thing in USA

Number 1 food experience for 2011

Thanks Ashleigh

Eating at the Meson Panzo Verde near the fireplace .

Having a great cup of coffee with my good friend and owner of Pasteleria La Cenicienta .

Petals.

Dining at El Bullí ... Admirable, unforgettable and awesome ... 

Dinner at WD-50 for my 40th.

Getting advice questions from some very good professional chefs on CT.  That is sooooooooooo validating.

Getting "strokes" and thanks for cooking and knife advice from so many people I've met on CT.

Many of my biggest highs were equipment related and this will sadly read like a commercial.  Tied for first:  First time I cooked on the Klose; Third time I cooked on the Fatboy (first time after I could make everything work the way it should).  Developing competent consistency roasting coffee with the HotTop (Roast 17 in late July, was the breakthrough -- I keep notes).  Really making the (new La Cimbali) coffee machine sing (took a few weeks, so mid January).  Wiring the (new La Cimbali) grinder to a Gralab darkroom timer,  mid April.  Finding and buying French espresso cups labeled "Cafe Richard" from a cuter than hell antique store in Davenport.  The 300mm Konosuke HD suji. 

In one sense, it's no big deal because it doesn't cook any better than the old Calphalon anodic or multi-ply stainless, but I get a huge cook out of the copper cookware every time I use it.  Seeing it on my stove doing every day cooking is hilariously incongruous. 

BDL

is it too late for 2011?...just kidding....

i had some good ones this year, but the two that really stick are.....

1)  one night this summer after a late night at the restaurant, it was one of those absolutely magnificient star/planet studded nights...milky way, shooting stars, planets aligned...the whole shebang....got home, bundled up, sat out on the deck...ate cheese and crackers and cold pizza. drank 2 bottles of silver oak cabernet and talked all night.....glorious! 

totally worth the hell we had to pay the next day!

2)  buying fresh seafood from the local fishermen every single day in mexico last year for 2 weeks and grilling it on the beach every night......tequila, limes, waves..... oh yeah...

joey

My best food memory from 2011 happens to be the exact same food memory from 2010 as well.  Eating the pureed potatoes at Craft restaurant.  How but HOW do they make them so smooth and creamy?  (That's a rhetorical question, please don't answer).

A 24 course omakase sushi tasting at Ume in Seoul, Korea.

Outstanding preparation of sushi and superbly paced.  It was also my first time having blowfish or "fugu" in Japanese which made it more memorable.

You can read about it in further detail and see pictures from that evening in my blog at: http://hamatama.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/restaurant-ume-우메/