Food I can't forget...

There was a hole in the wall Thai restaurant in Ottawa, and it served a clear soup with tiny mushrooms floating in it.  I went in on a whim and sat alone when that was a daring-young-woman thing to do.  I still remember it.

A chain restaurant where I discovered, (at maybe eight?) that you could order Earl Grey tea in a restaurant.   Game. Changer.

This strange diner that served pizza with butter chicken on it in an age when spinach on pizzas was really avant-garde.  It's possible that was the first time I'd eaten butter chicken.

The Guinness I drank in a pub in West Halton, England.   I ordered it because I didn't know the name of another beer.  You could practically make a meal out of it, I discovered.

A strange breakfast place near my university that made a green lentil salad.  I've searched high and low for a recipe for that salad.   The owners were Middle Eastern and apparently thought green lentils a satisfying breakfast food.  They were correct.

Years later, same city, a now-long-closed Eastern European deli and their pickled mushroom salad.  Oh my gosh, that salad.

Another city, this time with Vietnamese pho and deep fried spring rolls.  I always go with A.  She gets the chicken, a medium bowl.  I get the rare beef, a large.  We bicker over who gets the bill and have the same debate each time - should we try something new or stick with what we love?  I've never tried the new.

Out for a meal with the people who worked with me.  It was a restaurant that served Portuguese peri-peri chicken.  It remains the best chicken I've ever eaten.

The take-out Starbucks tea I ordered when I went to browse in the bookstore as an angsty teenager just trying to get out of the house.  Tazo Passion.  Sour, fruity and floral and it made me cough.

That bakery with that bread, the one my parents used to buy.  We ate it right out of the paper bag, smeared with butter.  I can taste it.

That other bread, the European one, with all the fruit in it.  It sold out so fast you could never buy it.

A wealthy friend's mother comes to town and insists on taking us for supper.  I have no idea where to suggest but finally come up with the name of a monstrously expensive trendy new sushi restaurant.   She cavalierly sweeps us off.  We eat $200 worth of sushi.  I've never had anything like it before.

I'm lonely at university and my father comes to town for a business meeting and takes me for supper at a very old-school steakhouse with tuxedoed waiters and old white politicians in kind candlelight and heavy red drapes.  I order the capon.

Another solo meal, in Toronto's Chinatown.   A bustling restaurant,  a menu entirely in Chinese.  I just point to something and when the plate comes it is tiny, tiny birds, deep fried.

My boyfriend is house-sitting, I think, the only thing I really remember is the duck.  Another Asian marketplace and it's roasted with the head still on.  We buy a whole one.  "This is not going to be enough duck." I tell him.

My parents leave me alone at home.  I'm maybe 17.  They tell me I can have friends over for supper.  I dig through the freezer and find tiny little lamb chops.  I've never used the gas grill outside by myself but I figure it out.  A bunch of 17 year olds sit around the backyard eating teeny lamb chops.

My grandmother is dying and we go in November to celebrate Christmas.   I'm very young, but the Greek restaurant has this baklava, and I am shocked no one has ever explained how fantastic this stuff is.  It drips with honey.

I'm married and there's this place across from where I get off the Subway from work.  They serve forgettable food and an astronomical baked rice pudding covered in creme bruleé.

We find a Turkish flatbread pizza place where you can get a fried egg on top and a heaping pile of raw onions, parsley and tomato on the side.

Family comes to visit and we buy chicken sausages at the Italian grocer.  We cook them over a fire in the backyard.  They might be the best sausages I've ever eaten.

The weird chili wings with a sort of milky sauce.  I don't understand why they are good, but they are good.

The children stand around me as I feed them escargot in garlic butter out of the cast iron fry pan.  Even when they find out what the escargot are, we can't stop eating them.

It's the end of high school and everything is bubble tea and gelato.  You get the bubble tea at these odd internet cafes and the gelato at the place downtown.

Someone suggests breakfast.  I order the fruit plate and it comes as an elaborate peacock style platter of carved fruits.

My soon to be husband and his parents go with me to a place called House of Lasagna.  It revolutionizes lasagna for me and I'm not kidding.

Long before we were anything at all, this cute guy and I sit together at a work function and slide food onto each other's plates.  He takes my baby carrots and I eat his shrimp.  Twenty years later he eats his own shrimp. 😊

We're in Montreal and we have to visit Schwartz's Deli.  It's great, but I'm upset because they don't give you mustard when you buy a few pounds of smoked meat and a loaf of bread.  You want me to eat it plain!?!  My fiancé runs across the street and goes to a grocery store to buy me some and gets yelled at by a homeless man.

We are at the homemade ice cream place and my sister in law says "oh, I just saw someone go by with ginger ice cream!" This necessitates some rummaging in the store fridge and finding the last pint.  We stand outside with a couple of spoons and break into $9 worth of ginger ice cream.

A small town, and sour cream peach pie.

A gas station, and this amazing bottled water that tastes like iceburgs.

My parents complain that I drink an unreasonable amount of milk.  It occurs to me that I could just...buy my own milk.  The thrill of drinking all the milk I care to purchase.

First year university and there is a kitchen.  I make up a dish called 'a sliced eggplant fried in tonnes of oil and covered in this Greek style spice from the store'.  I feel brilliant and eat a lot of eggplant.

The Mennonites make jars of pickled eggs and we sit in the car and eat them.  Also huge hunks of dried summer sausage and buns made with tomato paste.  It's the taste of summer.

I'm learning how to can and I make jardiniere for the first time.  It's the best thing ever and I eat every single jar.

My mother and I are standing in a basement apartment and trying to recreate this lime ginger syrup a friend has gone on and on about.  When we figure it out I realize I can never again not drink this in soda water.

A friend introduces me to Chicken Marbella and it is what I make for guests for years.