You may have seen Jay Rayner as one of the judges on "Top Chef Masters" on Bravo. He is a restaurant critic from London who has been published in several newspapers and food magazines. Appropriately, this is the book I have been reading during my lunch break. It is a memoir of Rayner's year-long global search for "the perfect meal." He visits cities all over the world (New York, Moscow, Tokyo, Dubai and Paris, among others) and documents what he eats a long the way. Some of the meals are extraordinarily good, while others are just the opposite. Regardless, they are always very expensive.
To be honest, many of the foods he ate sounded pretty unappetizing to me; others I had never heard of before. Of course, I have never eaten in a Micheline star-rated restaurant, which most of the places Rayner visited were. I'm sure I never will eat in any of those places. None of that matters, because Rayner knows how to talk about food -- that much is certain. You are almost able to see, smell and taste what he is eating through his descriptions of the food. You get a real sense of the ambience of each restaurant -- some of them pretentious and some holes in the wall. This book is a great read for the foodie in all of us.
That said, let me tell you about two of my favorite restaurant meals of all time. The first was at Tre Scalini in Rome in 1994. The restaurant is located on the Piazza Navona, and we ate in the outdoor area right on the piazza. To be honest, 16 years later I don't remember a lot of the details. But there are three things I do remember. One was the steak. It was fantastic. In fact, after eating that steak I didn't feel like eating steak again knowing any other steak would pale in comparison. Eventually, I lost my taste for steak altogether and almost never eat it now. The second thing I remember was the dessert -- their well-known tartufo, a chocolate ice cream dessert. The third thing was our waiter, Rafaele. He took the time to translate for us and helped us out a lot with what to order. This was not a cheap meal, but it was worth it. Well, actually, I didn't pay -- my parents did -- so maybe you'd have to ask them if it was worth it.
My second greatest restaurant meal was at the Bodega Castaneda in Granada, Spain in 2003. This was a very small place with a few tables inside and a few more outside. You had to get there really early to get a table. I ate there twice while in Granada. Both were good experiences, but one stands out as even though it was very simple: the albondigas (meatballs). These were the best albondigas I'd ever eaten. I think I commented on every bite I took, as if it was a surprise that each bite was as good as the last. It's not expensive, so definitely check it out if you are ever in Granada.
And so ends my attempt at being a food critic. I think I'll leave that to Jay Rayner from now on.
My review: 3.5 stars out of 5
The meal in in 1994 was worth every penny (or lira) we paid for it. It was an unforgetable excperience!
ReplyDeleteI think the best thing I've ever eaten was the roast suckling pig I had in Toledo, Spain. It just kept getting better and better as I ate. It was certainly the most tender meat I've ever had. Tender doesn't even really describe it, it was almost slimy, and took a few bites to adjust to, but adjust I did! Also, just the idea of roast suckling pig is a big f-you to PETA, so that's a plus.
ReplyDeleteOther great things I've eaten: pasta dishes from Restaurante la Galleria in Florence (simple but wonderful), pastry in Paris, that meal you described at Tre Scalini (my first great meal that I remember), street-vendor meat pies in New Zealand (it's a whole meal... for a dollar... and delicious!), Lou Malnati's Pizza in Chicago, a steak I had outside some little restaurant in a less crowded part of Venice, the first time I have ate Thai food and the second time I ever ate sushi (both revelations), and the tenderloin Mom makes at Christmas.