Meals to Remember?

Yorky

Yorky

RIP 21/01/2024
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Not necessarily the best meals that you've ever had but those that you will always remember. Whether you cooked it yourself or ate it at a restaurant or at a friend's house or anywhere. And maybe just the company caused it to be special.

One of the first meals which sticks in my mind as special was a brown rice and vegetable stir fry in a wok over an open fire on the beach in Essaouira in Morocco in the early 70's - accompanied by a folk singing Dutch couple with guitar.

Maybe I don't remember it that clearly.
 
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My first fish and chips at Harry Ramsden's in Guiseley, Yorkshire - eaten outside in newspaper (c. 1962).
 
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The first Aberdeen Angus steak that I ate in the Wyndales Hotel in Biggar, Lanarkshire, cooked over a massive gas barbecue. 1974.
 
The first time I tasted an oyster: on Mersea Island (Essex) in the Company Shed.
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The most interesting meal was shortly after my parents divorced. (Thank God. ) Mom was going to take us (my brother and I) and a few friends out to pizza. A guy asked her out. She really didn't want to go and used us as a reason. He said no problem. How about I take you all to the fancy expensive Chinese restaurant?
Now us kids weren't stupid and figured 2 meals out was better than one so we agreed.
It was also one of the few times we were told don't look at the prices order whatever you want.

The other memorable meal was about a year or so later. We had moved to another town and dad came down once to show off his "wealth" or to try to rub the fact that mom couldn't take us out to nice meals in her face. Anyway, nice, fancy seafood restaurant, so of course we do what mom had taught us and ordered the most expensive appetizer we could find. I loved the oysters on the half shell, my brother on the other hand turned a pretty shade of green.
Later, my brother went to work there.
 
My first raan in the Bukhara restaurant in the Maurya Hotel, New Delhi. No cutlery provided. I've twice tried to cook one since then but with only minimal success.
 
My first Crispy Patta. I met up with an old friend from way back in Hong Kong in the mid 90's. We went to a Filippino restaurant called Cinta Js in Wanchai and my mate ordered 2 Crispy Pattas. The waiter looked at him strangely and suggested it may be better to just have one to start with and then order another later if we wished. When it arrived I realised why. It was a whole hind leg of pork!

Although it was exceptionally good, we didn't order another.
 
The first sambal I had In the Shangri-La, Kuala Lumpur with a Chindian colleague cooked by my friend Gazhali. Normally he serves it with shells and heads on with rice but for us, he removed the shells and heads and served it with fresh French bread (still warm).
 
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Not the first lobster I had eaten but the first one in the company of Chinese colleagues. We (they) bought two live lobsters from the fishermen docked below the restaurant (Kowloon, Hong Kong) and gave them to the chef for cooking. They arrived whole and the three Chinese immediately dug in and commenced shell cracking with their teeth and spitting out the bits of shell on the floor. I told them that I couldn't possibly do that (I have two crowns) so they ordered me a toffee hammer to break the shells. Their method was much faster than mine so I probably only ate 10% of the crustaceans.
 
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Each time I see this thread I think of another experience.

Salt and pepper "Gulf" prawns in a restaurant in Doha, Qatar. They were so bloody good I don't think I ever ordered anything else in that restaurant.
 
My introduction to chili con carne was at the Kirkhill Lodge "Hotel" lounge bar in Dyce, Aberdeen at 21:30 on a cold and damp March evening (it's always cold and damp in Aberdeen) in 1984. Never eaten it before; never stopped eating it since!
 
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