Top 10 Best Meals Ever (Restaurant Edition)
Recently, I posted 25 random things about myself. #10 stated that I keep a running list of the top ten meals that I’ve eaten in my life. A friend posted that I should enumerate them here in my blog, and that in addition to being interesting it would give me 35 things rather than just 25 things.
I began thinking about those meals, and I realized that I really have two lists. I have a “Restaurant Edition” and I have a “Home-cooked Edition.” I consider the two mutually exclusive. There are inherent differences between Restaurant food and Home-cooked food, both having their respective places in the culinary world but I simply cannot compare the two. First, restaurant food tends to have a certain “science” about it. For the most part it is reproducible in a particularly regular fashion. This is illustrated by being able to return to your favorite restaurant and generally receive the same meal night after night if you wish and always be generally pleased with the outcome. Home-cooked meals, on the other hand, seem to be in a constant state of flux. The conditions in your home kitchen are unpredictable at best, and it seems that the acquisition of ingredients can vary from day to day (especially if you’re like me and like to shop the local market). Because of this very real difference — scientific reproduction vs. flying by the seat of your pants — I think it is only fair to keep two separate lists. Which, in fact would give me 45 random things about myself when everything is said and done.
Another potential problem with my Top 10 Best Meals Ever (both restaurant and home-cooked editions) is that I have never attempted to rate the meals among themselves. This food is just entirely too good to be judged on such minutia. Rather, I will have to list them chronologically. That seems to be the only logical way to present them.
Third, I have not in the past judged a meal based on the entirety of the meal. Rather, it could be deemed outstanding for only one portion of the meal. Additionally, the portion of the meal that rockets it to the Top 10 Best Meals Ever might be what some would consider a “side” or something fairly insignificant. I can, however, guarantee that the Top 10 Best Meals Ever does not contain one single dessert. That would have to be an entirely different list, and most likely also broken up into restaurant edition and home-cooked edition as well.
Finally, I have one other small confession to make. The Top 10 Best Meals Ever is an incomplete list. I am, after all, not even halfway through my life at this point so it’s only natural that it should be incomplete, leaving room for a few more meals to be added before I start having to demote meals from The List.
Without further ado, I give you The Top 10 Best Meals Ever (Restaurant Edition):
2008 – Cannelloni di Casa, The Old Ebbitt Grill, Washington, D.C.
2006 – “The Discovery Menu”, Grillið, Radisson SAS Saga, Reykjavík, Iceland
2005 – Pan Seared Scallops over Linguini with Saffron Cream Sauce, Carambola Beach Resort & Spa, Kings Hill, St. Croix
2003 – Pastechies, McDonald’s, various locations, Aruba (yes, I know, very sad… but they were awesome).
1999 – Conch Burgers, The Cracked Conch, West Bay, Grand Cayman Island
1999 – Mashed White Sweet Potatoes with Balsamic Glaze (and fish/seafood of sorts), Unknown Restaurant, Grand Cayman Island
1998 – Grilled Salmon with Pesto Risotto, The Hotel Bel Aire, Los Angeles, California
1995 – Chilean Sea Bass, Hotel del Coronado, San Diego, California
OMG! You are forgetting the dinner of desserts at CRAFT in NYC!!! It must have been that you were sick and just forgot.
Wow — I’m impressed! Maybe I’ll have to visit the Hotel Del next time I’m in San Diego! Though who knows what’s transpired in the 13+ years since you had the dish. In case you get to SD again, my favorite places are the Pizza Port (in Solana Beach – awesome pizza AND beer brewed on the premises), 910 (in La Jolla – outstanding regional fare), and Roys (in La Jolla – great seafood). So when do we see the home cooked meals so you can get credit for the 45 items? ;^)
Desserts get their own SEPARATE list! But my sickness has sort of masked a lot of that trip. Now that you mention it, that meal will definitely be on the dessert list!
The next three lists are a bit harder. Home-cooked meals, restaurant desserts, and home-cooked desserts willtake a little while. I’ll try not to wait too long though!
Neat little trivia about Hotel Del Coronado – the silverware is from an old cruiseliner and they are magnetized. I guess that’s how they were kept from sliding around on the high seas. It’s also where Some Like It Hot was filmed!
You went to Craft while you were in NY?? I didn’t know that! I just read about how they have a special “cheaper menu” right now, so people on budgets can actually attempt to eat there. AND that’s Tom Colicchio’s first restaurant (I believe)! Totally jealous.
Food is so wasted on me because I don’t know chefs. We went to Craft last year when we were up for Westminster, but we had eaten a really late lunch and didn’t want to actually “eat-eat.” I think we picked that place because it sounded like they had good appetizers and small plated food. But we ended up eating just this big plate of desserts.
I was so deathly ill when we were there I had forgotten all about it until Cece mentioned it in her comment. But it was really awesome.
I discovered they participate with Open Table (which I think is awesome) so I informed Alex I would really like to go…
I *heart* Open Table.