What is the most remarkable meal you've ever had in Europe?

It’s time to boost a bit the traffic in the Europe board now I see most moderators are starting to work on their own boards. I know there aren’t a lot of active members from Europe. From your trips and travelling, which are the most memorable and remarkable meals you have ever had? It could be of the cooking and the taste, it could be also the atmosphere of the restaurant or the place… Thanks a lot for sharing.

(I need some time to think about mine, ate many meals that were good but the best…)

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For me it was at La Tagliata . Not most remarkable , but the most memorable day . Looking out from the restaurant down onto Positano . One of the courses . A simple lunch with way to many glasses of wine . Ha Ha :wine_glass:

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The view is indeed magnificent!

Was it a pasta dish?

Yes it was the pasta course . Gemelli I think with some gnocchi . Their was also vegetables , prosciutto , sausages , and grapes to finish .

Difficult question. Our meal at Sola last November is definitely a candidate. Another candidate would be our meal at Les Truffières in Bosredon, outside Trémolat. The former was the epitome of sophistication, the latter was remarkable for its simplicity. But both of them evinced the generosity and ability of those who prepared and served them, and provided great culinary joy to those who were privileged to partake of them. I hope that this doesn’t sound too sanctmonious!

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Oh, this is going to be tricky. I’ve been visiting other European countries, covered by this board, once or twice a year for over 40 years. So many meals.

In Pollensa, Mallorca, I remember lunch at Celler es Moli. Effectively it’s workman’s cafe and we shared our table with two decorators, still in their overalls. There were three choices at each course - basic cafe stuff - salads or soup to start; fish or lasagne to start, tarta for dessert. Food includes water wine and coffee. Cost €8 (in 2008). The concession to you being foreign is that they’ll address you in Castilian, rather than Mallorquin.

There was the first dinner we ate at the Basilique in Albert, department of the Somme. I couldnt tell you what we had for the other three courses but the cheese course was memorable. The trolley had about 20, all from the region and they served it with bread (of course) and small handful of salad with a really mustardy dressing. We’ve tried to replicate the dressing at home but never quite got it right. We’ve eatne there several times since and always enjoyed ourselves.

I’m torn between two mezze meals in Yeroskipou, Cyprus. One at the well known Seven St Georges where they seem to reinvent the mezze every time we go. And the other, just round the corner at Mezodopolian. The latter didnt have the inventiveness of the former and you’re sat at tables scattered along the pavement. It was hospitality at its best. My notes say we ate Village salad, the dips, pickled celery, a very fiery pickled chilli pepper, roasted olives and a roasted cherry tomato, a fine lountza, deep fried rolls of ham stuffed with feta and spinach, moussaka, courgette mixed with scrambled egg. And then on to the meats – chicken wings, three sorts of sausage, pork souvlaki, afelia, lamb chops, sheftalia, liver. All excellent – apart from some strips of belly pork which were unpleasantly chewy. Fresh and candied fruit for dessert. Cost was about €15.

A lunch at Aquaile in Calais. On the top of a block of flats - had it been a finer day, you’d have seen Britain. To start, an assiette de fruits de mer - whelks, winkles, grey shrimps, oysters, prawns and langoustine. For a main I had a tagine of monkfish.

We had pizza in Bardolino at the Pizzeria Bardolino. It was, simply, the best pizza we’d eaten before or since. Everything you want from apizza - thin crsip crust, tasty tomato sauce, just the right amount of toppings. And, a bonus for this straight middle aged man - the servers were all very good looking your women, showing off most of their very lovely legs. No wonder it was packed with young Bardolino men.

Dinner at Club Allard in Madrid. Very formal place as it can often be in Spain. Chef comes to introduce himself and check you’ve no dietary issues. Then it’s straight into a full-on multi course tasting menu. All very clever and memorable as an over all experience. And the next day, we went grazing round the tapas stalls at the Mercado San Miguel. Just fab.

Oh, I could go on and on. But I’ll finish on the first time we went to the now closed In De Wulf in Dranouter, Belgium. Another tasting menu. Chefs bring our the dishes they’ve cooked and explain them to you. We were surprised one was a Briton form near home - we asked how he got with the language (Dranouter is a Dutch speaking part of Belgium) - but the language of the kitchen is English. The food is all very local, all very seasonal. Here’s a list of what we ate (taken from the menu):
Pork cracker
Crispy onion
Fermented carrot
Beetroot, yoghurt
Crispy potato
Whelks
Dogfish, green asparagus, rhubarb, lovage, lardo
Heather smoked mackerel
Kohlrabi, sour cream, herbs
North Sea crab, young fennel
Roasted cucumber, roe, squid
Plaice, split pea miso, yellow beans
Reed mace, sorrel
Snails from Comines, garlic
Oosterschelde lobster, Kerremelkstampers
Asparagus of Ghyvelde, nettles, egg yolk
Goat kid of Uxem, seashore vegetables and herbs of Ambleteuse, goat’s whey
Blood pudding, pig’s ear, rhubarb
Burned bread, maroilles
Keiems Bloempje, rye bread
Spruce shoots, woodruff, green strawberries
Flowers
Goat’s milk of Uxem, dill, young cucumber

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This one’s easy for me. I’ve only swum the pond a couple of times, but I ate one of my best meals ever at a little mom and pop Indonesian restaurant in Edam, Netherlands. Dutch - Indonesian - colony - yada yada.

The Dutch husband ran the front, the Indonesian wife ran the kitchen. Our friend’s daughter waited all five tables. Small place. Long gone. Best meal experience of my life. We were taken there by the friend, (whose daughter was waiting tables - please try to keep up), and were about twelve altogether at one big round table and a couple of four tops pushed up.

At one time, there were 36 dishes on the table with only a couple of repeats. We were treated like royalty and the food was unbelievable. We sat there for hours and there was never an empty dish on the table.

There may also have been beer involved. I have a picture somewhere of the table, but this was long before cell phone cameras and it’s on real paper. If I can find it and the scanner’s cooperative, I’ll post it later.

Anyway, I have no idea what the name of the place was, or the name of the proprietors, but it was the best meal experience I ever had.

BTW, on the same trip, in Amsterdam we also had a surreal hospital themed dinner at Supper Club, and had an elegant dinner at de Waag in a room where I am reliably informed, we can be fairly certain that Rembrandt van Rijn used to … uhm… relieve himself.

Good times.

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I was staying at someone’s island summer home in Greece, and their parents were away and it was one of the best vacations ever.

We would go out in a little boat, and my friend would drop a piece of rope into the sea, at the bottom of the rope was a knot with some kind of food in it. Then after waiting a few minutes , you pull the rope up and a little octopus would have wrapped itself around the knot. It was so exotic to me. Octopus fishing!

Then you take your catch to the taverna on the beach, and they cook it for you, and you can also order other items.

I don’t know if it’s a “remarkable” meal, but those dinners at the taverna are my most memorable meals.

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This is so true. Some of my most memorable dining experiences weren’t necessarily gourmet, but the people and the place made the meal unforgettable. Here are a few:

Summer of 1998, my first trip to Venice: spaghetti alle vongole at a hole-in-the-wall in the Jewish quarter. It was my first experience with clam sauce, I was with my best friend, the weather was beautiful and we were on a major teenager-giggly high, having just been hit on by and flirted with (using our best broken Italian) the most gorgeous man I had ever seen (tall, dark and handsome with the most piercing aqua eyes, WOWZERS). She and I still talk about that day and that meal!

Berlin, 2008 - this was my first extended audition trip to Germany and I was still struggling a bit with the language (not that I am now fluent by any means, but day-to-day conversation isn’t a problem anymore!). Had had a bad audition and was just feeling really homesick. Stumbled across The Bird in Prenzlauerberg, where I had the greatest burger of my life, bar none, and a little pep talk from the American bartender (auf Englisch!!!). Just what I needed at that moment. The burgers there are STILL the greatest anywhere!

Bologna, 2009 - my husband and I were in Germany auditioning together and we took a little side trip to Italy. We had just one day in Bologna and made it our mission in life to try ALL of the gelato, so we had walked all over town and wanted nothing more than a relaxed meal in the evening. Dinner was at a little family-run trattoria (the name of which I can’t remember) - the son was the waiter, the mom was the cook, and we were practically the only patrons in the place. They served us the most delicious butternut squash cappellacci and garganelli with sausage EVER, plus a delicious and tender horse steak (our first time eating horse). They made us feel like family.

Again in Venice, this time spring of 2012. I was living in Berlin and my parents came over for a little tour of Europe with yours truly as tour guide, and we spent a few days in Venice. The weather had been cold and rainy throughout our trip. The day we had planned to go out to Murano/Burano, though, we woke up to warm sunshine and a ZILLION other tourists on the vaporetto. I had booked lunch at Venissa on Mazzorbo, and when we stepped off the crowded vaporetto it was like we had entered paradise. We had the entire island to ourselves, practically, and enjoyed the food in the most serene and beautiful environment imaginable. The food itself was good but totally secondary to the atmosphere. I’ll always remember how much my parents enjoyed themselves there.

Same trip with my parents in 2012 - lunch at Le Cinq in Paris. This was pure gustatory indulgence. An unforgettable foie gras with strawberries and prawns the size of lobster tails. Incredible service. I just re-read my review on CH to relive every bite!

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That is SO COOL! Now I just need a friend with a summer home in Greece and I’ll be all set!

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Simple, A baguette, cheese, wine while sitting on the banks of the Thames river. Simple cheap and wonderful.

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Your post reminded me of a meal we had in Venice a number of years ago. We had fried scampi/langoustines. The portion was enormous, more than we could eat. And they were delicious. And affordable! I would not want to imagine what a meal like that would cost today.

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Pintxos crawl in San Sebastian in the early 2000s. Variety, scrumptuous servings, and plenty of tinto and Txakoli at then-unheard of prices. A storefront selling freshly made potato chips was steps from the now famous Ganbara where they were perfect with the one bar dish you order there – your choice of wild mushrooms sauteed and topped with a sunnyside egg. All the evening’s other stops (at least a half dozen) escape us, and the one that should be remembered dished up a pintxos featuring elvers that, departing from form, we washed down with a draft Cruzcampo.

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+1,000,000

ive learned that the best meals are about the company youre with and the experience of it all. i rarely have a meal in nyc or paris or london thats transcendent.

memorable meals over the last few years were driving into girona on a whim one rainy night. we didnt have reservations but they squeezed us in at Nu restaurant (i believe its owned by the people that own Massana). The feeling of knowing exactly where to go and walking in the rain under the covered tiny streets of Girona to a memorable meal with my wife was special.

having drinks at bar dai muagetti in san rocco followed by trofie al pesto and ligurian rabbit at cucina di nonna nina and walking down the dirt road buzzed off of wine was amazing.

and lastly, aperitivo at mom cafe in porta romana in milano with all of the locals followed by plate after plate of delicious food at trippa was something ill never forget.

i won’t count the dozens of phenomenal picnic lunches of various pates, sausages, and cheeses while walking in France and Spain. but if I limit this to restaurants and further limit it to the last year for relevance, by far the best meal I had was at Cafe Pushkin in Moscow. it had everything good about modern Russian food with none of the downside. Besides the quality of the food, the presentation, decor, and service were all perfect. I almost never take photos of meals but this was one of 3 or 4 times I took photos in the past year. If you make me dig them up, I will.