Hungry?

November 20, 2005 9:39 AM

Hungry?You will be.
posted by brautigan (40 comments total)

Luke: I'm not hungry!

Yoda: Ahhhhhh. You will be. You will be.
posted by Gator at 9:58 AM on November 20, 2005

Interesting how many of those are moments of meat.

For mine, I was going to pick the hot chocolate I had at SQC after seeing the Gates. Or my grandfather's fried perch (he fried it in this propane-powered backyard-fryer contraption he made, with cornmeal and black pepper breading).
posted by Miko at 10:02 AM on November 20, 2005

Thanks so much. My morning cornflakes are going to taste dee-licious now.
posted by argybarg at 10:18 AM on November 20, 2005

One of my finest food memories was the first time I had avocado with stilton cheese. Just that - a fresh avocado sliced in half and topped with crumbled stilton. Stick a spoon in it and dig away. HEAVEN! Whoever would have thought?
posted by PigAlien at 11:15 AM on November 20, 2005

Nostalgic more than hungry, but it's not about 34 course dinners. The large handful of scallops the fisherman in Doyle's Cove PEI wouldn't take payment for, simmered in butter on the wharf over my Coleman stove. Bresse chicken. Really good bread. The Coho caught from my canoe in Active Pass, cooked on the shore. Restaurants? The old Le Crocodile, on Thurlow, before it became pretentious. Nothing matched it for a total experience, not even its three-star Michelin parent Au Crocodile in Strasbourg.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 11:26 AM on November 20, 2005

When I was a kid we had a pizza place near us called Pizza Supreme that served small rectangular slices unlike any pizza I have ever tasted since. Thirty years later I still think about that pizza and wish I could track down the guy who owned the place so I could ask him for his secrets. And yes, I've tried.

That's my best food memory.
posted by gfrobe at 11:33 AM on November 20, 2005

Discovering coriander the first time I had phad thai in a noodle shop.
posted by furtive at 11:33 AM on November 20, 2005

"I have a friend called Stefan who constantly tries to introduce me to eating odd things like herring sperm, or elk."

????????

I found most of these food nostalias depressing. The odd food memories were less depressing than the mutton memories, but by and large they were depressing.
posted by leftcoastbob at 11:59 AM on November 20, 2005

The first course was so beautiful that I wanted to frame it. It was a square plate divided into four with the following in each corner: foie gras eaten with a tiny spoon from an eggshell; scampi in a clear gazpacho; one perfect oyster; and a slither of gravadlax.

And what in the holy hell is a slither of gravadlax and why would one purposely consume it? It sounds like a cure for Delhi Belly.
posted by leftcoastbob at 12:04 PM on November 20, 2005

So, leftcoastbob, what do you like?
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 12:09 PM on November 20, 2005

It's true about crumpets. The mom's British and gave them to us as kids. My god, yum yum.
posted by samreich at 12:10 PM on November 20, 2005

This post is useless without pics.
posted by i8ny3x at 12:22 PM on November 20, 2005

My gramps used to make me hot chocolate and Wonderbread toast in the mornings when I was young. Greatest combo in the world. I still remember the way the chocolate burned going down one morning right before my mother came into the kitchen and collapsed. Haven't had it since.
posted by cmonkey at 12:36 PM on November 20, 2005

What do I like? I like anything chocolate. I like fresh fruit. I particularly like chocolate with fresh fruit.
posted by leftcoastbob at 12:39 PM on November 20, 2005

I doubt that I would like herring sperm and I abhor mutton, though. I still wonder what gravadlax is.
posted by leftcoastbob at 12:40 PM on November 20, 2005

"There's a place in Nashville that's called Prince's Hot Chicken Shack. It's in a fairly insalubrious part of town, but it serves fried chicken that is just incredible. "

Tom Parker Bowles is the man.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:45 PM on November 20, 2005

Gravadlax is some sort of salmon dish.
posted by cmonkey at 12:45 PM on November 20, 2005

leftcoastbob: they have this internet thing now. i hear there are even ways to search it!

plus the word kinda-sorta resembles "lox"!
posted by flaterik at 12:49 PM on November 20, 2005

I'm glad they asked Morgan Spurlock for his story (very similar to Jamie Oliver's). Tommy Lee? Not so much.
posted by bardic at 12:52 PM on November 20, 2005

Uh, is it me or did they call Prince Charles a farmer?
posted by allen.spaulding at 12:53 PM on November 20, 2005

Lamonica's Pizza. Pasadena,CA.

They haven't been open for years now. I have never tasted anything like it since.
posted by Hicksu at 12:55 PM on November 20, 2005

I was thinking more in terms of a gravadlaxative than salmon in the same way I thought of flaterik as an after-effect of beans as opposed to a name. (And I did hear about that internet thing. I was merely wondering idly about gravadlax, however, as opposed to having a burning desire that would actually jolt me into the action of searching the internet thing. Maybe it's the depression that has overtaken me due to thinking about all that mutton.)
posted by leftcoastbob at 1:00 PM on November 20, 2005

I was starting to get hungry until I got to the rooster testicles...
posted by insomnia_lj at 1:08 PM on November 20, 2005

A skin-searingly cold day in Oxford when frost still stuck to medieval walls at noon. A tiny bar which served big crusty rolls packed with hot roast beef, fresh off the sirloin, and horseradish. We ate those rolls while walking along the street. Our clouds of breath hung in the air for a long time after we'd passed.
posted by paperpete at 1:23 PM on November 20, 2005

About three years ago I had a party, and by three in the morning the remaining hardcore were getting hungry. The locusts had already been through the fridge, and all that was left was some frozen haggis, some pasta, some pesto and some peas. With a glass of whisky each, it was food fit for champions.

I should point out I don't ordinarily have haggis in my fridge.
posted by Hogshead at 1:58 PM on November 20, 2005

An appetizer of carpaccio del polipo featuring alternating, impossibly thin slices of octopus and Manchego cheese. La Vitrola, Cartagena, Colombia.
posted by emelenjr at 2:27 PM on November 20, 2005

I'm happy to have learned the word "insalubrious."
posted by brundlefly at 2:28 PM on November 20, 2005

A single raw oyster with shaved garlic in Surat Thani.
posted by bardic at 3:36 PM on November 20, 2005

A long thin crusty baguette slathered with fresh butter and a little ham passed into me through a window at a French country train station in the middle of the night after a holdup kept us foodless on the train for many hours. I didn't and don't much like ham, but that sandwich remains the best thing I ever ate.
posted by CunningLinguist at 3:47 PM on November 20, 2005

Unfortunate line-break in the heading for Dan Lepard's memory.
posted by jennyb at 4:41 PM on November 20, 2005

Meat, cheese, crusty bread, and wine at the Restaurant am Ende der Welt (Restaurant at the End of the World). This was a small restaurant that we stumbled across while driving up a tiny mountain road in the Alps (don't remember if it was Switzerland or Austria). Eating this repast on the deck overlooking a spectacular view down the valley below us was one of those things that makes life worth living.
posted by TungstenChef at 5:07 PM on November 20, 2005

In 1995, I ordered a cheddar cheese and pickle sandwich from a little corner cafe in Llandrindod Wells, Wales. I was expecting sliced cucumber pickles or maybe piccalilli. I was disappointed when I found some weird, chunky brown stuff between my cheddar and brown bread. Then I tasted it, expecting the worst.

Even though it's hard to find and expensive here, I haven't been without a jar of Branston pickle since 1997. Good cheddar, homemade bread and Branston is unbeatable.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:19 PM on November 20, 2005

Thanks for reminding me about Branston pickle, Mayor! I still keep a jar of Marmite around, I just love it. Now I'm going to have to go find that pickle!
posted by PigAlien at 6:20 PM on November 20, 2005

Metafilter: Now I'm going to have to go find that pickle!
posted by spock at 6:33 PM on November 20, 2005

Branston Pickle lovers - try the PB&BP sandwich. It's great - seriously....HP sauce will sort of work if you can't find BP, but it's not quite in the same league...
posted by Jon Mitchell at 7:09 PM on November 20, 2005

When I was a kid, there was an offshoot of Famous Ray's Pizza on Rt. 35 in NJ, near Manasquan. Who knows if it was the real deal (they had newspaper clippings about the Original in Greenwich Village, NYC), but the texture, the cheese, the sauce... all of it combined into the most amazing experience my mouth ever had. The amazing thing? The second slice always tasted better than the first.

I left NJ and they disappeared. Sigh.
posted by id at 7:49 PM on November 20, 2005

iD: try Freddie's in Long Branch.
posted by Miko at 8:33 PM on November 20, 2005

Devilled eggs at an anti-Super Bowl party.
posted by theinsectsarewaiting at 8:56 AM on November 21, 2005

Red beans and rice on a Monday night.

The first time I ever tasted a fresh green bean, after a childhood full of canned vegetables (or frozen ones, if I was lucky). It was steamed, crisp-tender, with nuttin' on it ... I thought it almost tasted like candy.

The first time I ever tasted a dessert wine, as a guest at the home of some serious foodies in West Hollywood. I regret not remembering exactly what wine it was, but it was thick and honeyed and intense and golden and nearly made my head implode with joy.

The first time I ever bought a fresh black truffle ... they packed it in a little brown paper bag, and as I drove home the perfume of that truffle filled the entire car. It was so maddeningly intoxicating I nearly crashed the car. (I made a very rich risotto with it, which was fantastic.)

My first meal at the French Laundry in Yountville, quite probably the single finest restaurant meal I've ever had.

The broiled salmon steak I was served while a guest at the home of Mary and Joe Burgess in Sligo, Ireland; it was River Shannon salmon, caught the day before, brushed with Irish butter and seasoned with salt and pepper, and which was magnificent.

My first visit to my friend Dr. Cocktail's house, during which I was served:

* a Champagne cocktail made with Abbott's Bitters, an absolutely wondrous ingredient which has not been made since the 1950s (this particular batch was of the superior variety made in the late '30s, before they changed the formula post WWII) and to which I became immediately addicted. (I've managed to find about three quarts of the stuff since, more than enough to last me for the rest of my life.)

* a Sazerac cocktail made with 13-year-old Old Overholt whiskey which had been distilled pre-Prohibition and bottled post-Prohibition

* a "Blue Moon" cocktail consisting of gin, lemon juice and vintage Crème Yvette, a violet-flavored liqueur that hasn't been made in over 40 years

* "medicinal" Bourbon made during Prohibition that had a plain label bearing a huge warning saying that consumption without a doctor's prescription would result in a $1000 file and at least a year in prison and was manufactured by "The Kentucky Medicinal Whiskey Company" (it was superb)

*a five-year-old Martinique rum into which a few drops of Swedish punsch had been added, making it taste like a 20-year-old rum

* ... and a few other things that my pickled brain can't remember.

The 32-year-old Talisker single malt Scots whiskey I bought on the Isle of Skye in 1988, just after it was bottled, which I saved for 6 years before I opened it, and which we just finished last year ... it was glorious.

The raw oyster topped with sake-ginger granita from the late, lamented Cinnabar in Glendale.

The peanut butter and Miracle Whip sandwiches on toasted bread that my paternal grandmother used to make for me. (It doesn't work with mayonnaise, and don't knock it until you've tried it ... it's about seventeen million times better than it has any right to be).

Bacon.

The hot sausage poor boy with cheese from Gene's Po-Boys on Elysian Fields and St. Claude in New Orleans, which was badly damaged by Katrina and is now closed (*sob*)

I could go on for days.
posted by chuq at 5:48 PM on November 21, 2005

This person has come up with a recipe for Abbott's bitters, btw.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:30 AM on November 23, 2005