What's the place you dream of going to?

I got the new issue of a Food Newsletter yesterday, and one of the main articles was all about a trip to El Bulli (and how to arrange one for yourself).

And, frankly, I wasn't that captivated. I don't mean that, given the chance, I wouldn't happily eat there. But I realized that my idea of my ultimate food destination, my dream meal, is not the hottest hippest four-star. Partly it's because, with two young kids, I have a hard time even imagining the logistics that would end with us in Spain, the kids taken care of for 5 or 6 hours, and me and my wife spending them sitting in a restaurant. I've eaten enough things in the same genre (Achatz-era Trio, Moto, etc.) that, rightly or wrongly, it doesn't feel like a life-changing experience any more. Probably this is wildly wrong. Probably I am a fool for caring about food, living at the same historical moment at Adria, and not racing there.

But when I watched Bourdain's show about El Bulli, well, El Bulli and Adria seemed interesting, thought-provoking, intellectually stimulating, but the ham place at the beginning of the show... that sang to me. And in the newsletter, so do the descriptions of Catalan and Basque roadside joints and tapas bars peeling off slices of ham and washing them down with fat, pungent olives and smearing fresh-baked bread with salt cod and so on and so on.

So those are places I really dream of going to-- the little places in the middle of France, Italy, Spain, who knows where, where fantastic things are made fresh from no further than a few miles away. I don't know the names, most of the time-- but I want the chance to spend days searching for them. That's my dream. What's yours?

I agree with you that sometimes the expectations are set so high on the haute places, that combined with the pricetag, you end up not transported to nirvana. Carlos, in Highland Park, fell into that realm: it was great, it was probably even a good value for what we got, but I didn't walk out going "mmmmmm" for an hour. I get the feeling that The French Laundry would probably do the same thing to me.

On the other hand, I've been lucky a couple of times: Babbo tasting menu in NYC produced probably the most pleasurable meal I've ever eaten, and a restaurant I think was called Don Juan in Milan served a meal of roast pheasant and raddichio risotto that blew my mind.

But my dreams, like yours are simpler. I've been to dreamland a couple of times, and it's always tough to get back:

• Hot Sauce Charlie's, a shack on Lookout Mountain, that served the best pulled pork sammy I've ever had, with searing sauce and creamy cole slaw, and I doubt it would ever pass a Chicago board of health inspection.
• A childhood pie experience, the ur-pie of coconut cream, that sticks in my head strongly enough that I can still see the yellow building from the interstate near Chattanooga (thirty years before the above pork sandwich) -- I have no idea if it's still there, or if its pie is still as good.
• A restaurant on the docks in Plymouth, MA during a savage thunderstorm, with ethereal fried clams and lobster rolls. Perfection in what they do, humble though it may be.

Things I still dream of:

• Perfect tacos from a street vendor in Mexico
• Dim sum in Hong Kong (the dream includes knowing the language. Hey, I can dream, right?)
• Another Bourdain inspriation: Bun Cha in Vietnam

It seems like my dreams include the travel portion pretty strongly. I'm looking for the sources, the originals, so I can understand the inspiration and derivation that drives local restaurants.

JoelF wrote:

• Hot Sauce Charlie's, a shack on Lookout Mountain, that served the best pulled pork sammy I've ever had, with searing sauce and creamy cole slaw, and I doubt it would ever pass a Chicago board of health inspection.

Which Lookout Mountain (what state) are you referring to? I'm going to be near one Lookout Mountain in a couple of weeks. Here's hoping.

Dream places, okay, here’s mine.

I’m 19 and had just gone to the Hospice Dieu de Beaune, where I had the first of several intense religious experiences while standing in front of the great triptych of The Last Judgment by relatively obscure Flemish arist, Roger van der Weyden; I remember looking into the archangel’s eyes for a very long time.



Shaken by this vision of my certain damnation, I went to lunch. I found this dreamy little tavern, on a side street hidden in shadows, musty and medieval. My table was not great; I was seated next to the room with the hole in the floor. A hunched-over French lady brought out a copper pot of veal in a brown sauce, the first great veal I had ever had. The slender green beans set the paradigm for all to come. The cheese course…well, I never looked at cheese the same way again. After many bottles of Burgundy, I forgot I was damned.

I would like to go to that little tavern again.

David “A la recherche du temps perdu” Hammond

Right now I'm dreaming of a Ferdie's Special at Mother's, some freshly shucked oysters at the Acme, and the perfect muff at the Central Grocery Store. Here's hoping these are dreams we'll all be able to realize by next year.

Danny's Restaurant in Carlsbad, NM

A one week BBQ tour in Texas tasting sausage and brisket.

Pete Jones Skylight Inn, Ayden, NC

My grandmother's (†) house...



Antonius

Interesting that as posed, Mike's question was pointed toward new experiences - the article about El Bulli and the ham place - places he hasn't yet been that call to him.

Immediately the responses all did a 180 and became 'temps perdus' reminiscences. Is it our collective middle age, or just a human tendency.

My response too was a list of dishes perdu - specifically things my grandmother made that were not passed on to any succeeding generation. Her kreplach, gefilte fish, ruggalach, latkes, kasha, stuffed derma, her astonishingly rustic, rough-hewn homeade ice cream cakes (her own yellow layer cakes, hollowed out as by some criminal mining enterprise on a mountaintop in W. Virginia, and stuffed with ice cream, then closed up and iced).

Handmade tortellini from a tiny Italian shop in London 25 years ago. I think on Old Compton St.

My first Indian meals at a place near Paddington called Ganges.

Dinner at Grappolo d'Oro in Rome. Also Girone VI, now closed.

Fish soup at a place in Venice called Cafe La Madonna.

A plain butter/sugar crepe from a street vendor somewhere in Paris.

My first meal at the old Avanzare under Foley(?). Fegato a la Veneziana - done really right.

Osso Bucco on Easter cooked by my friend and university mentor in the house we were renting in Florence. A million other meals in his company over the years.

A salad of white beans, good olive oil, garlic, parsely and not much else, brought by another faculty member to fuel a moving party.

Etc.

mrbarolo:

Good point. But I guess for me, it's hard to think in any specific terms with regard to the future. I suspect that virtually every culinary cultural zone in the world might offer up something new to me and wonderful... Local products and local dishes all over the world are what interest me; I can't think of a single restaurant that I feel specifically drawn to visit (though I certainly can understand and respect others' different feelings in that regard).

Once I win the lottery, I'll be packing my bags...

A

Lately, I've been dreaming of the street food stalls in Beijing's hutong. I'll be there in three weeks, so I guess that counts as the future.

Hey, did not Dickson start this thread once before...

I'd rather look forward instead of looking at meals once eaten, which does mean, of course, that stellar meals once had, chile crabs in Singapore, brisket in Lockhart Texas, Joe's Stone Crab, are not future desires as well.

Still, I have a long list of places I want to try. Here's just a few:

The Basque place in Bakersfield. (Damn you SethZ and Jon Gold!)

Alain Ducasse

Nick Tahou's, Rochester NY

Pico Teriyaki House, LA

St. John, London

Peter Luger, Brooklyn, NY

Topolobampo, Chicago, IL

Resturante Arroyo, Mexico City

Chez Panisse and Zuni Cafe, SF

Any still standing Rhode Island shore dinner place

L'ami Louis (with Johnny Apple), Paris

Craft (with Steve Plotnicki), NYC

I am quite happy to have a go at it again, but a la recherche, indeed:

A restaurant on a sunny summer afternoon, somewhere on a side road in Germany near the French border, hungry, we stop in. The Bride orders the stroganoff, a dish I would disdain, and out it comes, charcoal-grilled beef tossed lightly in cream with wild mushrooms, and a touch of onions over egg noodles. Perfection.

The trip was a visit to my roots, with some hand guiding us to the right places, tho we seemed to be wandering with my daughter in the oven, and contrary to the best medical advice.

But what we both remember is that dish, which we agree is the single best we ever tasted.

I always liked Proust's approach - you live 1/2 a life and then spend the second half revisiting the high points. Savoring.

Pizzeria Da Michele in Naples
El Danubio in Mexico City
Es Racó d'Es Teix in Deia on Mallorca

Bill/SFNM

I've alluded to this before, but for me less a place than an environment. My old neighborhood near Boston, Davis Square in Somerville, had a great pizza parlor, two great sub shops (one with fantastic cheesesteaks, the other with spectacular cheeseburgers), two scratch bakeries (one where I learned of my love of savory buttermilk biscuits, the other making the flakiest, most amazing cinnamon rolls), a genuine Pullman diner, another diner (since closed) that opened at 10 PM and closed at 6 AM, a number of ethnic options, two independent coffeehouses, a lauded Irish bar, an ice cream shop that made its product onsite, adequate barbecue (once-great until its original owners sold it), and a variety of restaurants from a sports bar to upscale bar food (where I learned to love duck) to more creative upscale spots. Should you have cooking facilities, an old-school butcher (a decade ago prices were still added up written down on the bags) and two greengrocers. To be fair, it lacked a good deli; I had to go to Harvard Square or Coolidge Corner for my pastrami needs.

Anyway, that's all in a three-block radius, and Boston-area blocks are much smaller than Chicago's blocks. There's nothing like it here. In retrospect I marvel that I still managed to develop my cooking skills so well surrounded by so many options, but (apart from the sports bar, I'd say) I patronized them all plenty in my 4 1/2 years in Davis Square. It's what I've searched for in vain since moving here, naively thinking all cities must have such sustaining neighborhoods.

VI mentioned:

L'ami Louis (with Johnny Apple), Paris

I've been dreaming of going there too, ever since Ruth Reichl wrote a poetic New York Times review in 1997 (I still have it.) A sample:

"We start, of course, with foie gras, thick pinkish slices of terrine encased in yellow fat. The portion is shockingly large, far too much for any sane person to eat and far too delicious for any food lover to leave. The waiters watch indulgently as the accompanying towers of toasted bread disappear. We can't possibly eat it all. We do.

Then there is salad in a glass bowl, each leaf of lettuce glistening beneath its dressing. The chicken is an ode to animal fat, an entire bird served for two. Finished with both goose fat and butter, its flesh is silkier, its skin crispier than any bird I have ever eaten. It is magnificent....The meats are terrific, but as far as I'm concerned they're just an excuse to eat their potato cake sauteed in goose fat. Cooked until it is perfectly soft, the cake is a great circle of sliced potatoes turned out onto a platter and sprinkled with parsley and raw, diced garlic. It is extraordinarily good."

Makes my cholesterol go up just thinking about it, in a good way of course. On the other hand, I've been to Peter Luger's, another VI dream pick (the only "fancy" place my NY in-laws like) and I find it just so-so. I'm hoping when I finally get to Paris L'Ami Louis will live up to Reichl's description. As to places I've eaten that I think about fondly, I yearn all the time for Vancouver gelato, and have mused before about why we don't have such good stuff here. And the amazing shrimp rolls, for $4.95 Canadian, that I'd eat every day of our stay in Tofino, on Vancouver Island. One of the most beautiful places on earth, it has to be, and astonishingly good food (and not just the fresh seafood) for such a small town in such a remote spot. I highly recommend it as a vacation spot. There's surfing, too.

Mike G - which food newsletter had the DIY El Bulli trip? The funny thing is that the town of Roses is otherwise filled with little mom-n-pop joints. And the "camping" - as it's called - on the beach next door is what I call a mini-golf resort. It's the kind of place where 4 generations have vacationed together forever. In fact, El Bulli itself used to have a mini-golf course on its former roof! I'm not saying El Bulli is a must-eat destination for everyone - but it's sad to me when it's ruled out for its perceived exclusivity. It's a damn fun place - and comparatively dirt-cheap for a Michelin three-star.

My dream meal right now is to cook for my family in Chicago.