Last week I had one of the most memorable meals of my life.
Out of curiosity I’ve searched back through my memory files, and found just a few other such memorable repasts:
– A wiener roast on the top of a high snow-covered dune (we called it “Mt. Everest”) on the southern shore of Lake Michigan in the middle of winter. My family and another family were all bundled in snowsuits and boots, hats and scarves and gloves. I was four years old. The grownups built a bonfire for roasting hot dogs until they were charred in the kid-approved summer-picnic fashion (minus the crunchy sand). After wieners we had charred marshmallows and hot cocoa. It was childhood feast, memorable for over 70 years.
– Sometime in the late 1980s, my husband Joe and I had a memorable meal with our friends Wes and Judy. They were wealthy, we were not; and the four of us loved dining and playing and traveling together. To solve the income disparity, we agreed to alternate our social planning – Joe and I would plan one evening or road trip (inexpensive), Wes and Judy would plan the next (without regard to cost). The memorable meal happened at the restaurant atop the Westin Hotel in Chicago. (Wes wanted to go there because the restaurant featured a roving musician who played a Stradivarius violin.) It was a luxury restaurant, one of those that had “ladies’ menus” with no prices listed, so female diners need not fret about the tab which their male companions would, of course, pay. I tried to sneak a peak at Joe’s menu, but couldn’t manage it. So I made up my mind thusly: Okay, Cynthia, you are here in this fabulous restaurant. No matter what you order, the price will be way beyond what you think you can afford. SO – order what you really want to eat. Enjoy EVERY morsel of it. Be grateful. Do NOT give up a single moment to fretting; figure out later where you’ll find the money to pay off the credit card. And I did just that. I ordered in-season soft-shell crab, a lovely white wine, and even a crème brûlée for dessert. It was a glorious meal.
– Here I’ll give a nod to another meal, the reason I knew about soft-shell crab in the first place. A few years earlier Joe and I had driven deep into the bayous south of New Orleans. We found a little dump of a tavern where cars pulled up to one side of the building and small fishing boats pulled up to the other side. The soft-shell crabs we ate that afternoon had made the briefest of stops in a frying pan on the way from a boat to our plates!
– Another jaunt to New Orleans, another of my most memorable meals: one of the components of the prix fixe lunch at the Quarter’s tiny iconic Tujague’s Restaurant that day was a red rémoulade sauce. I remember nothing more of the meal – just that sublime sauce that my tastebud-memory can still recall perfectly.
– One more memory before I return to last week’s meal. This memorable meal was a picnic in Tennessee, with Joe and our friend Jim. We’d brought sandwiches we purchased at a deli, and a bottle of wine that Joe was excited about trying (he was a wine aficionado). We drove beside the Little Pigeon River, outside Gatlinburg in the Great Smoky Mountains, until we found a pull-off area that looked promising – where the river was shallow and raced around a few table-sized granite boulders. After leaving our shoes in the grass at the edge of the river we distributed our sandwiches and wine glasses among the three of us, and each claimed a relatively flat-topped boulder. On his boulder Jim opened the wine, stood up and poured a dram into the river as a blessing of gratitude; we passed the bottle from boulder to boulder, and it was, indeed, worth being excited about. I think the sandwiches were good, but the wine and the friendship, the granite and the cold rushing water are what I hold in my memory.
And now I’ll tell of my most recent memorable meal. The setting was an isolated cafe on Whidbey Island, the only commercial establishment for miles around, near the ferry dock on the west side of the island. Privately I was feeling sorry for myself about yet another sign of my aging: just an hour earlier I’d gotten (and paid for – gasp!) hearing aids. It had been raining all day, and I didn’t feel like socializing. But I’d made this date with my friend Katherine, and I was cautiously glad to be emerging from a couple of months of social/emotional hibernation. So there I was, in a motley mix of feelings, staring at the menu at Callen’s Restaurant. I ordered a steak, knowing that it might be tough (serves me right for wanting red meat). What the waitress delivered was a five-ounce sirloin steak, almost as thick as it was wide; beside it were two stalks of steamed broccolini, a finger-sized whole carrot, and a mound of garlic mashed potatoes – chunky, as I prefer them. I cut into the steak – it was tender, perfectly medium-rare and so delicious I nearly swooned. Soon I realized I was eating with pure joy!
I ate every morsel of food on my plate, then had a discussion with the waitress about available desserts and ordered a “warm chocolate truffle cake” (it might not actually taste good, which would serve me right for eating all that sugar). What the waitress delivered was a little hill of dark chocolate cake, embracing a core of hot fudge filling; there was a scoop of vanilla on the flank of the hill, and a shawl of raspberry sauce around its shoulders, with just a touch of whipped cream trim. It was bliss, and I devoured it with sensuous JOY. I did offer Katherine a bite, but she declined. I have no idea what she and I had been talking about (sorry, Katherine), but she tells me that I ate that entire dessert, every last tasty gram and granule, in less than seven minutes. With exuberance and moans!
A meal may be memorable for its tastes, its textures, its unexpected ingredients. A meal may be memorable for its location, its companions, its emotion du jour. The mental file in which I keep my memorable meals now has a new entry, memorable for its secret joy. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed it too as I’ve recounted it. Bon appétite!
What a delightful post! I’ll add the memorable meal you and I had together at a little bar in Grand Rapids, where you introduced me to roasted garlic-a whole head, which came in a little clay domed pot, if I remember right. It was delicious and fun, sucking out each clove.
And another: Backpacking in Colorado, when we stopped mid afternoon so Conrad could fish in the rushing stream near the trail. He caught a trout, and right away we lit our little camp stove and had grilled trout for afternoon tea, right in the middle of the trail! I made tea in my aluminum teapot with the round hole spout, which I bought in Norway in 1960. I remembered being with Norwegian friends and making tea out on the trails, way back then.
Oh, yes, and another–the scrumptious meal of mussels with you at the little restaurant in Coupeville. Never had such lovely mussels before or since.
Cheers, dear friend!
So glad you and I shared some of your memorable meals.
Cynthia,
It was at Zenon’s in Eugene in 1994, a special place. They closed Now, unfortunately.
I made plans to meet my friend Margaret there. Surprisingly, she had invited two of her friends, Helga and Elaine, to join us.
No memory of what I ordered, just that Elaine and I got lost in conversation, and we have been friends since. So many good memories in 26 years.
Thanks, Cynthia for sharing fond memories of food and friends.
Erica
Those moments of deep connection are magical, aren’t they?!
Cynthia,
Such a delightful walk down memory lane with you. My memories go directly to our Sunday family dinners when I was growing up. Mom made the best pot roast with the veggies cooked along with it. My dad worked out of town quite often, but he was always home with us at that Sunday dinner……often times we would play cards after the dishes were done….around the dining room table. This, of course added to the wonderful warm memories.
Thank you for jogging my memory of times long past, but cherished just the same.
I hope all you hear with your new accoutrements is pleasing…..may it be so!!
Mary N.
Warm blessings, Mary.
This is delicious, Cynthia! I’ll be thinking about memorable meals. And I’m pretty sure I’ve been to that spot on the Little Pigeon River. I have many lovely memories in the GSMNP, with family of origin, nuclear family, and alone. Last October I scattered some of my mother’s ashes there. Hugs.
a delicious journal entry, cynthia. i am mentally savoring meals i have loved …
Such fun, to enjoy them more than once!
Good to know the food at Callen’s is so delicious. I’m always racing when I pass it. Next time–pause for delight. You made me think of memorable meals–a treasured one, stopping late of an afternoon at an inn on a narrow road between Fiuggi and Rome. The innkeeper was apologetic that all the lunch items had been et, but if we’d give him a few minutes… The guy went outside and picked tomatoes and lettuce, dropped a line in a creek and caught fish… There was home-grown olive oil, homemade mozzarella, sizzled fish. It was heaven.
It don’t get no better’n that!!
Thanks for the delightful story.
On our 21st anniversary we were on a teaching trip in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Our host was partnered with one of the up and coming new chefs in the city and we entered a 12 course meal of the most delightful morsels–just surrendered to “whatever you say…” bite by bite, sip by sip. It stretched out over hours. There was a time out of time spaciousness. We digested on-site and made space on the tongue for the next mystery. We had no idea people ate like this, ever, and we probably never will again, but it was a sweet experience lodged in our hearts though I could not tell you what was the menu. Thanks Cynthia for your reverie.
Most of the time it’s the circumstances, and not so much the cuisine, that make a meal memorable. However, a 12-course Australian meal sounds like an entirely higher order of gustatory delight!
C’est si bon dear Cynthia!
Grandma,
This very much reminds me of my first solo trip to the island when we had a meal at Useless Bay Coffee Co, and had some sort of burger, but I was shocked at how much I enjoyed the mint sauce with the mussels that you had ordered. This stands out as one of the few times that I have genuinely enjoyed seafood.
Thanks for sharing!
Joseph
PS: I would say congratulations on getting your hearing aids, but I think it would be more apt to mourn with you at a distance.
Yes, I wish that Useless Bay Coffee Co was still offering those amazing cilantro/mint mussels. Glad you liked them too!
Let’s hold off on either congratulations or condolences on the hearing aids – Let’s wait to see if they and I can come to some sort of detente . . .
Luv ya,
Grandma