The best fried fish sandwich with the best tartar sauce I’ve ever had after a harrowing circumnavigation around Loch Ness. We started in Inverness, then drove south on the western side of the loch (on an A road) and then back up north on the eastern side (on a B road — unpaved, single lane, no guard rail), and it was a JOURNEY (with a stick shift, no less!). We stopped at the Dores Inn for fish and chips at the top of the loch, and it was the best meal I’d ever had, but maybe I was just glad to be alive 😅
I like this question a lot. I was in Taiwan almost 30 years ago. It was a super cold gray day and we weren't dressed for it. There was a man who had some kind of oven contraption on a cart on the back of his bicycle in which he was baking sweet potatoes. They were huge whole plain sweet potatoes wrapped in foil, steaming from the oven. We stood on the side of the busy street to eat them. I think about that sweet potato a lot and to this day haven't eaten a sweet potato that tasted as good as that one did!
That's like choosing a favorite book... I capture favorite first-taste memories from all my travels.
– One summer in Turkey we were gathered as a family on Büyükada and we had a fish special that I can describe only as "Pizza Fish" - it was a huge round platter with a huge fish, and tasted *delightfully* like... pizza.
– Smoked butter and bread in Istanbul at Yeni Lokanta after a long day of walking
– The first Dole Whip Float at Disney in Adventureland (any time I have it)
– Breakfast kolache at the kolache shoppe when I visit Houston
– Smoked salmon cheesecake in 2001 at Emeril's in New Orleans
– Lobster Spaghetti at Liverpool House in Montreal
– A pot of wild rice soup in Minnesota at my first winter visiting my BFF's family
– All *three* meals at Dishoom because they were SO GOOD. Black dal.
– Cold steak the morning after fourth of July in a completely empty downtown Chicago
– A lamb burger (the burger itself was fine) while I treated myself to a perfect day in Howth on the sea
My husband and I often reminisce about good food we've eaten in our travels. One of my faves was a random café in the shadow of the Chartres Cathedral... A Caprese salad where the mozzarella was incredibly fresh and the tomato was like a kiss from heaven. My daughter still talks about a ham sandwich (no cheese, no mayo, just bread and ham) that she ate in a restaurant beside Loch Lomond in Scotland after we'd dragged her on a long walk.
Love everything about this! I love when a random café turns magical.
Like your daughter, I distinctly remember my first sort of Euro-style sandwich when I was... 16? 17? It was in France somewhere: great bread, salami, butter. It was mind-blowingly good, and I still think about it now, 40 years later. —Mel
I had one of my best two glasses of French wine at a random cafe in the shadow of the Chartres cathedral! I took a pic of the name of the wine but don't remember the cafe...
You know how they tell you to just sit down at a cafe in Paris and order a glass of wine off the menu and it doesn't matter where or what it is and it'll be the best thing you ever had? This happened to us in Paris and in Chartres. I'm ruined for wine forever... I also had a really fun experience ordering food for a picnic at Charcuterie Arnaud Nicolas, which we took to the lawn below the Sacre-Coeur for the view. The man that helped us was tickled that we were on our honeymoon and heated up our haricots verts and gave us disposable cutlery and told us how to eat the first bite of our foie gras (no bread.)
Then there were poke bowls from Koloa Fish Market and Fresh Shave shave ice on Kauai, and Sushi Kashiba in Seattle was a transcendent experience.
Poi and fresh raw ahi with a Lava Flow cocktail to wash it down in Hawaii while visiting my husbands family this past Christmas. Also i am addicted to their Hurricane popcorn. In Aspen at Food and Wine, chefs xrom Australia served the most delicious rabbit.
I ate so much delicious fresh fruit in Hawaii, especially pineapple. I remember being served a fruit plate on the plane on the way home, and I was like, "I know what real fruit is now, and this isn't it.". :)
I know exactly what you mean. It’s so hard to even think about eating fruit here cause I know it’s not going to taste the same. Thank you for replying.
I travel a lot, so this is a tough one. If I was answering for my husband, he'd probably give the same answer as Dave - the rice pudding at L'Ami Jean! When I visited Florence for the first time (on my honeymoon in 2003), we ate dinner 2x at Trattoria Pandemonio. The first time, I ordered ricotta-stuffed squash blossoms and they were amazing, I had never tasted anything so deliciously delicate. When we went back to Trattoria Pandemonio at the end of our honeymoon (approximately 2 weeks later), I wanted to order the same squash blossoms, but were told they were "out of season". I was disappointed, but that was also when I really began to understand local seasonality and specificity of food in regions around the world. Now, I feel an urgency to order something when I see it on the menu, because there's a chance it won't be available when I return next!
In 2018, I visited my son in South Korea. My daughter Zoe said I had a list of things to do in a Korea and eating live octopus was on it. My son's girlfriend Eunjin was so excited because he would not eat it and she liked it. So Eunjin took Zoe and I out for live octopus. It is cut up into small pieces but it is still moving. The dinner also involved beer with shots of alcohol. I probably will not eat it again but it was a unique Asian experience.
Several years ago, I was at my niece’s wedding in Fort Walton Beach, FL. My mom and dad had driven over from Houston in their RV and I drove back with them. They had made the trip several times, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the road -- until, somewhere in Alabama, Dad ditched the freeway and headed north. We ended up at a hole-in-the-wall gas station out in the middle of nowhere. Dad grabbed Mom’s big soup pot, went inside and came back with a pot full of just dug up, freshly boiled peanuts! Boiled peanuts and cold beer!! Outstanding!
I was lucky to spend two months in Italy when I was 17. I and the friends I was staying with took a day trip to Venice where we stumbled on this tiny Chinese restaurant. There was no menu but they said for something like $5 ea they'd feed us (a group of six teenagers) a variety of dishes. We were all starving so immediately said yes and then the food just... kept... coming. I think we spent two hours eating plate after plate of delicious food I couldn't have identified if my life depended on it. Almost 40 years later I still remember that meal with such fondness.
It was 1989 in Naples Italy. I was 17 years old. I ate my first ever white peach. So juicy, fragrant, like sugar with the leaves still on it. It also was the size of an apple. It was hot and that peach. And...I have been eating white peaches and white nectarines ever since. No, the ones from California are not the same but they are good!
--homemade lutenitsa (a dip made out of red peppers) fresh out of the pan of our neighbors in Ohrid, Macedonia. They didn't speak English and I don't speak Macedonia, but when they saw me watching them make the lutenitsa in their backyard they invited me in. I also fresh bread to eat with the lutenitsa, along with rakia, a potent alcohol!
--Also in Macedonia, a man I met on a bench in Ohrid invited Brent and I to the house he was restoring in a mountain village. Over an open fire (they house needed a lot of work!) they cooked us an amazing meal!
--an incredible hamburger in ... Milan, Italy. I know! Travesty!
--Pad Thai on the beach in Koh Lanta cooked at a little tiny stand, then wrapped in paper. It was amazing.
As a younger person, I was not a very adventurous eater. But I went to Spain and specifically Valencia and had paella for the first time. I had met other young people traveling and they were not going to let me miss that experience. Thanks to those lovely people where they are today!
A raclette to die for in a small restaurant near the lake in Lausanne, accompanied by a small glass of kirsch. Also, fresh cut coconut sold by a street vendor on my first visit to Venice - he was keeping his wares cool by sitting the container in a fountain. When I went back to Venice years later I was hoping to recreate the experience but there was no coconut to be found.
A simple dish of mixed vegetables and noodles on My Khe Beach (China Beach) in Vietnam. I am a vegetarian and ate a lot of mixed vegetables with either rice or noodles when visiting Vietnam in the 1990s, but this dish stood out for its incredible flavors.
Haggis in Edinburgh. We Americans tend to act like it's such an exotic dish, but it's really a homey, comfort food. That plate of haggis, neeps and tatties was the best meal I had in Scotland.
My cousin in Edinburgh served me haggis with some sides of mashed potatoes and it was lovely. He did it to trick me into eating Haggis, but I really liked it.
The best fried fish sandwich with the best tartar sauce I’ve ever had after a harrowing circumnavigation around Loch Ness. We started in Inverness, then drove south on the western side of the loch (on an A road) and then back up north on the eastern side (on a B road — unpaved, single lane, no guard rail), and it was a JOURNEY (with a stick shift, no less!). We stopped at the Dores Inn for fish and chips at the top of the loch, and it was the best meal I’d ever had, but maybe I was just glad to be alive 😅
There is NOTHING like the food you eat after a stressful experience. It just tastes better. —Mel
Whew. I know what you mean about driving on B roads. Wish I’d found your delicious fish sandwich recommendation in Loch Ness.
I like this question a lot. I was in Taiwan almost 30 years ago. It was a super cold gray day and we weren't dressed for it. There was a man who had some kind of oven contraption on a cart on the back of his bicycle in which he was baking sweet potatoes. They were huge whole plain sweet potatoes wrapped in foil, steaming from the oven. We stood on the side of the busy street to eat them. I think about that sweet potato a lot and to this day haven't eaten a sweet potato that tasted as good as that one did!
That sounds just perfect. —Mel
That's like choosing a favorite book... I capture favorite first-taste memories from all my travels.
– One summer in Turkey we were gathered as a family on Büyükada and we had a fish special that I can describe only as "Pizza Fish" - it was a huge round platter with a huge fish, and tasted *delightfully* like... pizza.
– Smoked butter and bread in Istanbul at Yeni Lokanta after a long day of walking
– The first Dole Whip Float at Disney in Adventureland (any time I have it)
– Breakfast kolache at the kolache shoppe when I visit Houston
– Smoked salmon cheesecake in 2001 at Emeril's in New Orleans
– Lobster Spaghetti at Liverpool House in Montreal
– A pot of wild rice soup in Minnesota at my first winter visiting my BFF's family
– All *three* meals at Dishoom because they were SO GOOD. Black dal.
– Cold steak the morning after fourth of July in a completely empty downtown Chicago
– A lamb burger (the burger itself was fine) while I treated myself to a perfect day in Howth on the sea
I just got the Dishoom cookbook from the library! It's beautiful and I can't wait to try some of the recipes
Me too!
DISHOOM. LOOOOOOOVE.
Pizza fish! Smoked butter! I want both, please. Can't wait to eat at Dishoom. —Mel
Which kolache shop - I'm headed to Houston next week? And any meal at Dishoom is so divine, I'd be there daily if I lived in London...
Strong recommend: https://www.kolacheshoppe.com/menus/heights/ -- the Heights location is way better. Bacon, egg, cheese, personally.
Thanks for the rec!
My husband and I often reminisce about good food we've eaten in our travels. One of my faves was a random café in the shadow of the Chartres Cathedral... A Caprese salad where the mozzarella was incredibly fresh and the tomato was like a kiss from heaven. My daughter still talks about a ham sandwich (no cheese, no mayo, just bread and ham) that she ate in a restaurant beside Loch Lomond in Scotland after we'd dragged her on a long walk.
Love everything about this! I love when a random café turns magical.
Like your daughter, I distinctly remember my first sort of Euro-style sandwich when I was... 16? 17? It was in France somewhere: great bread, salami, butter. It was mind-blowingly good, and I still think about it now, 40 years later. —Mel
I had one of my best two glasses of French wine at a random cafe in the shadow of the Chartres cathedral! I took a pic of the name of the wine but don't remember the cafe...
Ha, amazing. I wonder if it was the same place!
I wonder! Was it full of fake flowers all along the walls, like maybe a wisteria tree?
Grr - I can remember much except how delicious that salad was and that it was VERY close to the cathedral…
You know how they tell you to just sit down at a cafe in Paris and order a glass of wine off the menu and it doesn't matter where or what it is and it'll be the best thing you ever had? This happened to us in Paris and in Chartres. I'm ruined for wine forever... I also had a really fun experience ordering food for a picnic at Charcuterie Arnaud Nicolas, which we took to the lawn below the Sacre-Coeur for the view. The man that helped us was tickled that we were on our honeymoon and heated up our haricots verts and gave us disposable cutlery and told us how to eat the first bite of our foie gras (no bread.)
Then there were poke bowls from Koloa Fish Market and Fresh Shave shave ice on Kauai, and Sushi Kashiba in Seattle was a transcendent experience.
Poi and fresh raw ahi with a Lava Flow cocktail to wash it down in Hawaii while visiting my husbands family this past Christmas. Also i am addicted to their Hurricane popcorn. In Aspen at Food and Wine, chefs xrom Australia served the most delicious rabbit.
I ate so much delicious fresh fruit in Hawaii, especially pineapple. I remember being served a fruit plate on the plane on the way home, and I was like, "I know what real fruit is now, and this isn't it.". :)
I know exactly what you mean. It’s so hard to even think about eating fruit here cause I know it’s not going to taste the same. Thank you for replying.
I travel a lot, so this is a tough one. If I was answering for my husband, he'd probably give the same answer as Dave - the rice pudding at L'Ami Jean! When I visited Florence for the first time (on my honeymoon in 2003), we ate dinner 2x at Trattoria Pandemonio. The first time, I ordered ricotta-stuffed squash blossoms and they were amazing, I had never tasted anything so deliciously delicate. When we went back to Trattoria Pandemonio at the end of our honeymoon (approximately 2 weeks later), I wanted to order the same squash blossoms, but were told they were "out of season". I was disappointed, but that was also when I really began to understand local seasonality and specificity of food in regions around the world. Now, I feel an urgency to order something when I see it on the menu, because there's a chance it won't be available when I return next!
"Now, I feel an urgency to order something when I see it on the menu, because there's a chance it won't be available when I return next!"
YES. —Mel
In 2018, I visited my son in South Korea. My daughter Zoe said I had a list of things to do in a Korea and eating live octopus was on it. My son's girlfriend Eunjin was so excited because he would not eat it and she liked it. So Eunjin took Zoe and I out for live octopus. It is cut up into small pieces but it is still moving. The dinner also involved beer with shots of alcohol. I probably will not eat it again but it was a unique Asian experience.
Whoa. I have never eaten a food that was still moving. What a cool memory/experience!—Mel
Several years ago, I was at my niece’s wedding in Fort Walton Beach, FL. My mom and dad had driven over from Houston in their RV and I drove back with them. They had made the trip several times, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the road -- until, somewhere in Alabama, Dad ditched the freeway and headed north. We ended up at a hole-in-the-wall gas station out in the middle of nowhere. Dad grabbed Mom’s big soup pot, went inside and came back with a pot full of just dug up, freshly boiled peanuts! Boiled peanuts and cold beer!! Outstanding!
That sounds AMAZING.—Mel
I was lucky to spend two months in Italy when I was 17. I and the friends I was staying with took a day trip to Venice where we stumbled on this tiny Chinese restaurant. There was no menu but they said for something like $5 ea they'd feed us (a group of six teenagers) a variety of dishes. We were all starving so immediately said yes and then the food just... kept... coming. I think we spent two hours eating plate after plate of delicious food I couldn't have identified if my life depended on it. Almost 40 years later I still remember that meal with such fondness.
What a great experience! Magic. —Mel
It was 1989 in Naples Italy. I was 17 years old. I ate my first ever white peach. So juicy, fragrant, like sugar with the leaves still on it. It also was the size of an apple. It was hot and that peach. And...I have been eating white peaches and white nectarines ever since. No, the ones from California are not the same but they are good!
Oooh, too many to answer! But here's four!
--homemade lutenitsa (a dip made out of red peppers) fresh out of the pan of our neighbors in Ohrid, Macedonia. They didn't speak English and I don't speak Macedonia, but when they saw me watching them make the lutenitsa in their backyard they invited me in. I also fresh bread to eat with the lutenitsa, along with rakia, a potent alcohol!
--Also in Macedonia, a man I met on a bench in Ohrid invited Brent and I to the house he was restoring in a mountain village. Over an open fire (they house needed a lot of work!) they cooked us an amazing meal!
--an incredible hamburger in ... Milan, Italy. I know! Travesty!
--Pad Thai on the beach in Koh Lanta cooked at a little tiny stand, then wrapped in paper. It was amazing.
Rakia 100% helps you make new friends. Love it! —Mel
As a younger person, I was not a very adventurous eater. But I went to Spain and specifically Valencia and had paella for the first time. I had met other young people traveling and they were not going to let me miss that experience. Thanks to those lovely people where they are today!
A raclette to die for in a small restaurant near the lake in Lausanne, accompanied by a small glass of kirsch. Also, fresh cut coconut sold by a street vendor on my first visit to Venice - he was keeping his wares cool by sitting the container in a fountain. When I went back to Venice years later I was hoping to recreate the experience but there was no coconut to be found.
Love the unexpectedness of coconut in Venice! —Mel
A simple dish of mixed vegetables and noodles on My Khe Beach (China Beach) in Vietnam. I am a vegetarian and ate a lot of mixed vegetables with either rice or noodles when visiting Vietnam in the 1990s, but this dish stood out for its incredible flavors.
Noodles on the beach. I've never. Now I want to very much. —Mel
Haggis in Edinburgh. We Americans tend to act like it's such an exotic dish, but it's really a homey, comfort food. That plate of haggis, neeps and tatties was the best meal I had in Scotland.
My cousin in Edinburgh served me haggis with some sides of mashed potatoes and it was lovely. He did it to trick me into eating Haggis, but I really liked it.
Now I want to go to Edinburgh to Deacon Brodies. They have haggis stuffed chicken with whiskey sauce that is amazing.
Right? When I tried haggis, I was surprised at how good it was! It reminds me of Pennsylvania scrapple! —Mel