Great Meals in Great Places Remembered
A cold grim February grey day dawns and the morning’s work requirement - which is calling for 1500 inspirational words on food and drink - is, for once, realising nothing but a blank screen. So what to do? Well, right now I can think of nothing - absolutely nothing - I’d rather think about than all the fabulous dishes I’ve enjoyed while on various holidays around the globe.
Hesp enjoying a beer before. a meal in Germany
If social media sharing sites like Instagram are anything to go by, I am not the only one reminiscing with taste-buds and tummy. After two years of zero-globe-trotting, a great many people are thinking about the culinary jewels which sparkle in the ‘happy departments’ of their memories.
These do not have to be the expensive six-course banquets consumed in posh restaurants or hotels. Some meals sparkle like stars in the vast void of the past because they somehow marry the concept of perfection with a sense of place.
Or, indeed, the sense of being in the wrong place. I can think of memorable dishes which stand loud and proud partly because their appearance seemed somehow incongruous, or not exactly in keeping with their surroundings. For example, the very best spaghetti bolognese I have ever eaten was consumed - not in Italy - but in a small outdoor cafe on a Corfu mountainside.
Corfu-style bolognese
Maybe I was extra-hungry after having walked up the long hot slopes to the ghost village of Old Perithia - or perhaps it really was just a perfect bowl of pasta and meat. I’m not sure, but I lean toward the latter. Because the spaghetti was absolutely spot-on al-dente and the meat content had great flavour, having come from a lamb reared on those very mountainsides. The cook had included vast amounts of fresh garlic from her garden and just the right dose of herbs collected from around the village. She had not held back when it came to lubricating it all with excellent local extra-virgin olive oil. Each morsel also contained an almost imperceptible hint of cinnamon - which is the Greek way when it comes to minced meat.
It was served, by the way, with a truly amazing orange and olive salad.
Okay, an Italian would scream: “That is NOT spaghetti bolognese!”
I wouldn’t argue. But who cares? Spag-bol is what it said on the hand-written menu. A “Greek take on spaghetti bolognese” would have perhaps been more accurate.
And how about my most memorable cheeseburger and chips? Not devoured in Texas or anywhere else in the USA, although I’ve had plenty of top-notch burgers across that great nation. The best example of this now ubiquitous dish was presented to me in a little road-house on the island of Hokkaido, northern Japan.
By way of explanation, a local farmer told me: “Hokkaido is like your Kent - it is the garden of Japan.”
The main local delicacies will have any English person feeling at home - cheese and potatoes. And no, I had not heard of Japanese cheeses before, or oriental spuds come to that. But both are a big deal in the fertile farmlands of this beautiful volcanic region. High peaks surround the fields and clear rushing rivers interweave the myriad foothills. At every touch and turn you come across lush crops growing here, harvests occurring there and little farm gate shops everywhere.
Hokkaido potato fields
Hokkaido potatoes are famed throughout Japan, because of their texture and flavour. They make the best chips imaginable. And cheese is a big deal in this dairy region. I particularly liked one which reminded me of Devon’s Sharpham Savour, which in turn is based on a French Savoie style cheese, boasting a rich, creamy hit with a slight tang. Just right for melting over a burger made from 100% grass-fed, aged, dairy beef.
Niseko cheese factory
I sat with other journalists in a windy alleyway in a place called Niseko Village, thinking: “Blimey! This is the best cheeseburger I have ever eaten!”
Here’s another unlikely memory… You can’t get much further from the sea in Europe than Vienna - yet one of the best plates of fish and chips I’ve ever eaten was a superb dish of deep fried local catfish and spuds, served at the Labstelle Restaurant in the heart of city.
Local catfish and chips at Labstelle Restaurant central Vienna
One of the finest barbecues I’ve ever had was cooked for me, not in Argentina or any other beef country, but in a steep vineyard in Madeira. The meat was cooked on long skewers over vine-wood by a man called Antonio Oliveira, who makes the island’s superb Barbusano wine.
One of the best salads I’ve ever had was served in a restaurant on top of a Swiss mountain in the middle of winter. So impressed was I, that have have written entire subsequent articles about the wonderful way the Swiss have with salads, no matter what the season.
Winter vegetable market, Lucerne
Of course, it is far more usual to discover that location lends itself, perfectly and intrinsically, to the food that’s being prepared. Take ceviche - the delicious and refreshing South American dish of raw fish “cooked” or soused in some kind of liquid - usually, but not always, the juice of some kind of citrus. A cooling ceviche made from fresh harvest conch meat soused in coconut milk was a thing of beauty I shall never forget - served, as it was, in a beach cafe on the beautiful isle of Petit St Vincent in the Caribbean.
Conch ceviche, Petit St Vincent
I once learned to make an equally delicious ceviche at a cookery class in the truly amazing Jade Mountain Resort, St Lucia. The view of the famous Pitons - St Lucia’s extraordinary twin-mountains - was enough to make you drool before you even began chopping salad stuff freshly picked from Jade Mountain’s own jungle gardens.
Attending a cookery course at Jade Mountain
Talking of doing the chopping myself, one of the best lunches I have eaten was one I cooked my greedy self in Vietnam. I hasten to add, this was also at a cookery school - this one staged by local village women at the excellent Anam Resort just south of Na Trang.
My best evening out dining from pillar to post was probably in the Sardinian capital, Cagliari. I say probably, because I’ve had a great many of these and they’ve generally been a little overly lubricated with alcohol, so there are other candidates. Anyway, just before the Covid lockdowns I went for a night out in Cagliari, guided by my pal Enrico Cao who manages a wonderful B&B called The Place in the city. We started by eating nibbles of bottarga - pressed mullet roe, otherwise known as Sardinian Gold. The night ended hours after midnight with me wailing: “No more! Please no more!” after a 15 course dinner at Su Tzilleri’e su Doge - an ancient and fabulous restaurant built into ancient city fortifications up on Cagliari’s main hill overlooking the port.
Restaurant Su Tzilleri’e su Doge, Sardinia
The best picnic I have ever had was with six female friends in the old Perrier bottle sand quarry in Provence, while staying at the amazing Hotel Crillon le Brave - one of my favourite hotels in all of Europe.
The picnic while staying at the amazing Crillon Le Brave Hotel in Provence
Some memorable dishes are so simple they almost defy description. Like the dish of half a dozen sea urchins I ate for breakfast - fresh, dripping and straight from the dockside at Bari on the Italian coast. Or the strips of best Parma ham brought from a truly heavenly delicatessen in the back streets of Lucca in Tuscany.
Sea urchins in Puglia
I don’t know if itchy feet is the right phrase, but you can probably tell from this article that - like so many people after 24 months of staying put - I am yearning to go off on some culinary adventures once again. If all goes well, I’ll be doing just that and reporting on my discoveries in these pages during the coming year.
