The Voices of Reason: The Best Food Ever

The Voices of Reason: The Best Food Ever
by Various Authors

At a recent dinner, a friend posed an interesting question, one which I thought I would pass on to the Voices of Reason....

Question: What is the best dish you have ever had, and where did you have it?

Jeff Lewis—The best dish I've had was a beet, lavender and pumpkin seed salad at Butchart Gardens near Victoria, British Columbia. It tasted so good that I ate it in tiny bites so that I could savor it for as long as possible.

There were a few other ingredients mixed in—mint, pumpkin oil—but they all melded into a united flavor. It's hard for me to believe that a dish centered around the beet could be my favorite meal of all time, but it even tops any pork or lamb dish I've come accross. Even Lynn, who hates beets, thought it was great. The rest of the meal was outstanding, too.

Lynn Lewis—My favorite dish is the Veal Carmine at Carmine's in South Pasedena. Always so perfectly yummmmmmmmmm. It's a fine cut of veal swimming in butter that, when drenched in lemon juice, makes the heart sing. On its surface, Carmine's is a run-of-the-mill Italian-American eatery, so you don't go there for anything else on the menu, including the sides. That lets you focus on the huge portion of veal.

Mike Daniels—The best dinner I ever had was the night I was engaged. This place is special not only for that event, but because it was the first time ever at this restaurant. The restaurant is the Hula Grill located in Kaanapali, Maui.

First of all, what a great setting. The location is in between the boardwalk of Kaanapali Beach and Whalers Village. Live Hawaiian music plays beachside while you eat and watch the sunset. Koa canoes hang from the air inside the restaurant and koa wood walls enclose parts of the restaurant without taking away the oceanfront view. The menu consists of a bunch of seafood and steak options including the chef's nightly special.

We started the night by my proposal down on the beach in front of the
restaurant. After the proposal, we headed to the restaurant where we
were taken care of first class after our server learned of our engagement just minutes ago.

I ordered a tri tip like steak with an herb butter sauce. I think it is referred to now as the Kansas city Strip Steak, but it was a little different back in '98. The meat melts in your mouth and has a nice taste. The portion was good and came with garlic mashed potatos that still had the skin.

To top the evening off, we had their famous Hula Pie for dessert. A hula pie has macadamia nut ice cream with hot fudge and whipped cream on a cookie crust. And its huge. You can find a similar restaurant owned by the same company in Malibu and one in Huntington Beach called Duke's.

I have never had a bad meal at Hula Grill and highly recommend the
place not only for the romantic atmosphere in the restaurant, but for a
fun atmosphere in the Barefoot Bar and Grill attached to the restaurant.

Amy Tu—The most amazing dish I've ever had has to be the Butter-Poached Maine Lobster at the French Laundry. (I don't think it was officially called that, but if not, it should have been!)

I absolutely love this dish. I was surprised that it wasn't a Nova Scotia Lobster, because the technique used to prepare it allows the butter to steep into the tender flesh and enhances the true sweet essences of lobster.

Cat Still—This dish itself was simple, really—a pear poached in brandy, cut into twelve sections from the bottom, with the stem-end left intact, so that the pear presented itself to us flared out like a pinwheel. The accompaniments were bittersweet chocolate sauce and crème anglaise.

I've had hundreds of desserts since that pear. But it was the first—the
first time I remember really tasting the food I ate, the first time I saw
food as something that could be presented artfully. It was the first time I
recall food appealing to all five of my senses—the smell of the brandy,
the sight of the simple and elegant preparation, the feeling of tugging at
the wedge of pear with my fingers, dredging it through the chocolate, the
taste of the flavors mingling, and the sound of my friends' voices.

This was the first time I shared with friends a meal that was just a meal.
We had nowhere to be and nothing to decide. We each ordered a small dish, and all ate from each others' plates. We sat on the porch of Café Degas for hours, long enough for brunch to turn into cocktails and then dinner, long enough for the sun setting through the moss-draped oaks along Esplanade to shine straight into our food-drunk eyes. We smoked every cigarette in our packs and then bought another from the waiter. Our howls of laughter made tourists stare and pigeons take flight. It was the first time I felt like I was living in a place I could call home.

Elizabeth has since married and divorced. Her family's house in Covington, where they've raised five generations of children, where we boiled crawfish, roasted Mardi Gras pigs and danced at her wedding, was beaten badly by the winds of Katrina but spared by the floodwaters.

Julie made it to Little Rock before she found a shelter at a Motel Six. Her house in the Irish Channel, built from sunken barges dredged up from the Mississippi, stands mostly unharmed, as it has for almost two hundred years.

Reggie joined his family's funeral home business on the North Shore when he could no longer play baseball. Brian moved to Thailand several years ago, where he lives surrounded by beauty. The house he and I shared, two hundred feet from the Mississippi river levee, was demolished years ago. Café Degas is still under several feet of water.

So Young Kim—When I was first posed with this question, a dozen delectable meals danced in my head. How does a food slut narrow her love of food to just "one best dish?" At first, my gut reaction was to say "the butter-poached lobster" at the French Laundry, so delicate and supple, that it seemed almost illegal to consume.

Then I thought, it must be the agnolotti al plin at Guido's in Costigliole d'Asti. The crescent-shaped, pillows of goodness filled with roasted pork, veal, and rabbit had more flavor in every bite then an entire pot roast. Yet again, another amazing dish, but is it the best dish I've ever had?

Both these dishes take me back to a special place and are once in a lifetime meals, but the questions remains: should my best dish evoke some happy emotion every time I think about it, or should it be a dish that I crave when my stomach is growling in the middle of the night? Then it finally hit me: Mrs. Duong's sticky rice.

Aaah, sticky rice. Mrs. Duong is the mother of an old high school friend, and here sticky rice was the best. Sticky rice is, in essence, a "sweet rice" or "glutinous rice," but Mrs. Duong takes it to a whole new level.
Her sticky rice is steamed to perfection, translucent with a caramel
hue, and accented with slices of Chinese sausage, slivers of shitake
mushrooms, and crispy shrimps.

When you place a spoonful in your mouth, it comes alive with the umami taste from the soy, chewy texture from the sausage, and crispy crunch from the shrimp. It's the kind of dish I could eat every week and would never lose it's appeal.

You may think you can get this sticky rice at any dim sum house, but think again. I've been searching for a substitute for years and have yet to find its equal. Nor have I been able to duplicate the recipe. It is indeed the best dish I've ever had and the taste I'll be forever chasing.

To submit a topic for The Voices of Reason, or to be added to the VoR Shout Out List, send an e-mail to martell@babblog.com.