Tell us about your first time

[Fresser]

We were three hungry college students, fresh from a fun afternoon at the Regenstein Library and in search of repast. Typically adventurous for the age, we schlepped down 53rd Street to Giordano's Pizza, only to hear it would be at least an hour before we were served. "That's too long," we agreed, so we moseyed westward down 53rd Street in search of someplace not so crowded.

We happened upon University Gardens, an unassuming Middle Eastern joint. None of us had tried Middle Eastern food before, but with a chorus of "What the heck?" we entered and sat down.

Shortly after we ordered, a mustachioed man named Khalil (who was known to the regulars there as "Mike") brought a tray with three falafel and tahini to our table. He dipped a falafel into the tahini, handed one to each of us and beamed, "On the house!" It was my first taste of falafel and I've been hooked ever since.

Certainly "Mike's" hospitality was part of what made a falafel freak out of me. Has anyone else had such a gracious host upon your introduction to a new cuisine? Did the host stick in your mind as much as the food did?

[torakris]

I still remember vividly my first experience with Japanese food, I was a 19 year old college student and some Japanese friends took me to a Japanese restaurant in Columbus, Ohio.

They all ordered sushi.

They gave me a piece of sea urchin (uni) and it was so vile I almost vomited...

They apologized and gave me maguro (tuna) instead telling me this was a favorite of children. I chewed off a tiny bit before I politely spit it into a napkin. They then tried to get me to eat octopus and I flatly refused.

I called the waitress over and ordered teriyaki chicken...

A similar thing happened with Thai food but I was 25 years old...

and look at me now!!

[rjwong]

I don't exactly recall my first time with a new cuisine. I grew up eating all sorts of Chinese & American food at home, so that doesn't count as a new cuisine, ehh?

It was in the 1980's near UCLA that I tried some Middle Eastern food at Falafel King, a popular place in Westwood. I ordered a pita falafel sandwich. I enjoyed the falafel with lettuce, all stuffed inside a pita bread, and topped off with some tahini sauce. They added a few homemade chips. It tasted great. So what if it was vegetarian, it still tasted great!

And whenever I'm near Westwood, I still go that place.

[Soup]

There has been many first...First Pho, Dim Sum, Indian, dungeness crab, real cheese made from unpasturized milk, dry aged beef they are all great and memoriable experiences.

I am now lucky enough to experience these food firsts again through the eyes and taste buds of my kids as I introduce them to my favorite foods. They really like some (e.g., dim sum) and hate others (e.g., crabs).

I also think one of the great things is the fact that I have been able to try all these item (especially ethic foods) without leaving the country. I've been to few other countries and most do not have the variety that we have here. Good thing for immigrants... (there are exceptions. I love the variety we found in london).

Soup

[Milt]

My first experience with different food is impossible to remember, because of my father. Incredibly, he was the pickier eater. My mother would eat virtually anything, and enjoy it. There were lots of foods my father wouldn't touch, but he was the venturesome eater.

We lived in Kansas City from age two to age five, and during that time my father discovered a downtown restaurant - King Joy Lo - which we went to with some regularity. Whenever we returned to Kansas City for a visit, we always ate one meal at King Joy Lo. My sister and I were always served egg foo yung. Apparently, our parents were convinced that this was the only thing we would eat and enjoy. Perhaps they were right.

When I was eight, we moved to New Mexico and southwestern cuisine immediately became part of our regular experience. Sopaipillas immediately became my favorite bread. They are still hard to beat when they are still warm and a container of honey is provided.

When I was a teenager, we were driving through downtown Indianapolis at noon. This was before the interstate system was developed, and US 40 went through downtown and so did we. My father noticed a Hungarian restaurant as we passed it and while making the four right turns to bring us back to it he was saying "There's a Hungarian restaurant. Haven't you always wanted to try Hungarian food?" He didn't expect an answer and none was provided. We did eat Hungarian food for the first time. I remember that goulash wasn't all that I had hoped it would be. Maybe it was the restaurant and maybe it was my youth. Normally, I would always order a ham and cheese sandwich when possible.

One Christmas vacation, we were in Guaymas, Sonora and my father inquired about the best place in town to eat. He was asked if he wanted the best Mexican food or if he wanted the best place in town to eat. We had wonderful Greek food that night at the local A&W.

Now, as an adult, I crave new dining experiences. When we first moved to Georgia, we were eating in a venerable old restaurant - Mary Mac's - and I announced that I was going to try hoppin' john. My wife had already figured out that I would order hoppin' john. I knew what everything else on the menu was and she knew I would go for the one dish I had never heard of.

I've rambled enough, but I feel that my attitude toward ethnic dining are a direct result of my father's attitude. My children have been burdened with that heritage, but I suspect that as adults they are better able to handle whatever they may be served. They have been exposed to virtually every ethnic dining experience offered in metro Atlanta - and they know that they can almost always find something on the menu that they can handle.

[johnnyd]

Once, I met my parents at the airport in Miami after a long flight. My Mom had that glint in her eye that told me she'd discovered something new.

We drove to Coconut Grove and spent the afternoon feasting on my first Sushi meal. It was a revelation that I'll never forget. Little did I know that 20 years later, I'd be mixed up in the Sea Urchin business supplying sushi restaurants in Japan.

[Milagai]

request to contributors to this thread:

could you please indicate the approximate time frame

you are talking about (e.g. mid 60s, or early 90's or whatever)?

it really helps to place things in perspective.

thanks

milagai

[mizducky]

I'm having trouble remembering exact firsts too, partly because there has been so many of them ... lessee ... trying to think of stories with more to them than just "I tried it for the first time and I liked it..."

Okay, here's one ... my first major exposure to Japanese cuisine was sometime in the early 1980s. I was hanging with a circle of friends who would make a yearly weekend-long pilgrimage from Boston out to western MA for the Tanglewood Music Festival. A core group would always cap off the weekend of music and good food by heading west instead of back east to Boston on Sunday afternoon, until they crossed over into New York State and came to a Japanese restaurant out that direction--I no longer remember the name or even the town, it's been so long. But I went with this core group and experienced a formal tatami-room Japanese dinner for the very first time, and was totally charmed. I've since had tastier Japanese food (though this place was no slouch), but that first experience of the ambiance really stayed with me.

[Corinna Dunne]

My very fist time was a Chinese moment.

I know that probably sounds pretty tame, but in the early 80's, eating experiences were very limited in Dublin. As it happened, the moment of terror was in Cambridge, UK. I was over there to go to one of the College's famous May Balls. A crowd of us went out to dinner, and Peking Duck was ordered for the table. I had never eaten it before, and had no idea what to do. To my right, was a charming guy from Singapore. He took the lead, and I watched his every move carefully, terrified that I would get the ritual wrong. He then turned to me and said, "This one's for you". What a gentleman, and what a relief. I don't think he was even aware of my anguish.

So my Japanese first a few years later seemed challenging, but in no way intimidating (I have since become an absolute addict, but unfortunately there are no decent Japanese restaurants in Dublin).

And for the Middle Eastern slant, I had, what I suppose you could call a Beduin first. Yes, we're still back in the 80's, and this time I was in Yemen, doing a travel peice with a photographer. Part of our one week adventure (and I don't say this lightly), was a night in a mud hut by the Red Sea. Our meal for the eveinig was hand delivered from a nearby village and was presented to us on a much used cooking tin covered in newspaper. We pulled back the newspaper to reveal a large fish, still hot and smokey from the grill. We feasted on this with a wonderful local cheese and freshly made bread, much thicker than the usual pitta bread. This was washed down with bottled water, and we retired for the evening on our straw beds. Unforgettable.

[Andrew Fenton]

When I was a kid (in the 70's and 80's), my mother would get mad at me for slurping my soup. She'd tell me that it was bad manners anywhere except at a Japanese restaurant. So of course I spun out all kinds of elaborate fantasies about what Japanese food would be like.

Flash forward to my first meal at a Japanese restaurant, circa 1981. I don't remember too much about it-- probably just some Seattle teriyaki joint-- but before the main course, we were each served a bowl of miso soup. I carefully lifted it to my lips, and inhaling equal amounts of air and soup produced a mighty

SLUUUUUUURP

that rattled the dishes, made everybody in the restaurant turn around to face us, and caused mom to flash shades of crimson only seen on fire engines, traffic lights and a few exotic tropical flowers.

Good times, good times.

[Hector]

My uncle remembers the first time he ate Pizza (!).. Which can seem very strange for most Americans who've practically switched from sucking on the nipple to eating pizza slices!

But he remembers in the early 60's in Sweden, when he got a dinner invitation to an Italian immigrant woman who cooked pizza for him and his mistress.

When he first saw the pizza he reacted like: WOW! What is this? how are you possible going to eat this thing? It was unlike anything he had ever seen. And remember that up to that period of time, swedish food was almost always cooked potatoes with meat/fish and thick sauces, some kind of porridge or open sandwiches and nothing like pizza or even that kind of white bread. He sat quitely around the table and tried to repeat how the woman ate her pizza. But he wouldn't manage. So he sat thru the whole thing. just cutting small parts with his cuttlery of the centre of the pizza and putting them in his mouth. the crust and lots of the pizza was left over.

[Poffertjes]

This may be more mundane than the sushi or durian others have talked about. I have tried those two, but it hasn't stuck in my mind as much as this first.

As a student in Argentina, I was walking down the street with my host sister when she handed me a little bready thing about the size of a donut hole and said try it. It was dry and nasty and horrible and considering it was about 44 degrees celsius I probably shouldn't have been eating bread right out of the oven. As I could say in my two day old spanish was, es bueno. Ick! Could I find a place to spit it out with out her seeing?

What was it? Chipa!

Oh, chipa. I yearn for you. Hot, toasty, cheesy chipa! I later learned that chipa is awesome, and for walking to school on cold days, a life saver. Buy a kilo and put the bags in your pocket during your walk to colegio, it was better than mittens, then you had a snack as soon as you got to class.

I have been shipped the mandioqa (spelling?) flour many times from Argentina, but the best was when my host sister was visitng here in January, she made some for me. Oh the warm, toasty, cheesy goodness.

[Carolyn Tillie]

I'm a military brat with my father having served from 1949 to 1974. He met my Mom at some Marine Corps party in 1952 when she was a WAC. I guess during the 1950s, the military cooks would prepare massive amounts of mutton and the mess hall would smell for days. Consequently, when I came along in the 1960s, my parents had long since even considered eating any form of lamb and I'm not even sure I knew it was a viable food source.

On my 21st birthday, I had been married just over a year and my then-husband took me to the swankiest Greek restaurant in San Diego (name escapes me, but it was one of San Diego's few three-star restaurants). It was my first exposure to both Greek food AND lamb AND Retsina. I adored all of it and the world of varying ethnic cuisines opened up to me as I began tasting food I had previously dismissed (mainly Middle Eastern ones).

Now there is nothing I won't try at least once and very little I don't enjoy.

At least the ex-husband was good for something!

Edited May 25, 2005 by Carolyn Tillie (log)

[Andrew Fenton]

Welcome, Poffertjes! Can you explain in a little more detail what chipa is? Sounds like... fried cheese, maybe like Venezuelan tequenos? Whatever it is, "toasty" and "cheesy" sound pretty good to me.

[deltadoc]

I don't remember the first time I ate pizza, but I do remember my aunt (who was a great cook) being surprised I would eat it. My father dictated what mom cooked, and Sunday's meal alternated from a super well done roast beef cut thick against the grain and served with the overcooked carrots, onions and potatoes that went into the covered roasting pan with it, or a cheap thick steak.

I got into cooking as a matter of survival, and luckily the parents never threw anything away, so the old stove went into the basement, and so did I!

But, in about 1980-81 time frame I met a Saudi royal cousin named Ohoud, who took me to Abdul's Afandy restaurant in Minneapolis. I think the TV show Roots was real popular about that time, and sure felt like I had found mine. Falafel, stuffed grape leaves, kofta kabob, shawirma, Jerusalem salad, hummous, and Tabouli, all on one plate called Abdul's combination plate.

I am sitting here right now at home from work for lunch, just finishing up from eating hummous, tabouli, tahini sauce, pita, and shawirma, all homemade!

Been eating this every day this week, and now its all gone! Good thing I talked my co-workers in going out to lunch tomorrow to the Holyland Restaurant!

Their buffet always includes all of the above!!!

doc

[Poffertjes]

Andrew, thanks. Chipa is a bread that varies a lot in Northern Argentina, Paraguay and else where in South America. It is made with mandioca flour, which roughly translated to tapioca flour. But since they don't eat tapioca pudding or really use tapioca in any other whay its hard to know.

Mandioca flour, egg, butter, cheese, milk, mixed into a paste (I'll dig up a recipe) and then roled into balls, and then baked. In Paraguay they use a rougher flour and they are formed into logs and snakes and other shapes. I perfer the version I found in Corrientes which is about the size of a donut hole.

They have stands all over the place as well as vendors selling them on the street and door to door. The magical thing about chipa is when you bite into them the cheese has melted throughout it and its delightful. Its not bready at all if done right. Its more like biting into a gooey cheese curd.

Hope that helps.

[Pan]

The first time I can remember eating Thai food was at a neighborhood restaurant in Bangkok in 1975. It was a somewhat humid but reasonably mild night (probably in the low 80s Fahrenheit with a slight breeze) and we were sitting on a terrace and looking at geckos on the wall. All the tables were filled with Thai customers, and I'm not sure how we knew to go to the place; perhaps we just stumbled in. Anyway, the whole experience was magical. I even thought the geckos were cute -- something I no longer felt when they got into my cereal repeatedly during the next two years I was living in rural Malaysia.

I also remember the first time I had roti canai. It was also in 1975, just a bit later in the year. My father and I were taking Malay language courses at the Sekolah Bahasa-Bahasa Moden (School of Modern Languages) near the Pasar Chow Kit in Kuala Lumpur. Before each class, we always went to the same roti-maker, an Indian man who had a griddle set up in a closed-off street and made each roti to order with an expertise comparable to a master pizza maker. After class, we always went to an Indian Muslim restaurant, Alim, for lunch, and that's the place where I had my first tastes of liver curry and okra curry. Yum! Firey, earthy, cheap food that was lovely.

[snowangel]

It was August of 1967, my 9th birthday. One day into Thailand, we were fed larb (raw pork). squid salad, curry, kanom krop. At a party for me. It was to be my first birthday without a cake. It was just fine with me. Although the old Erawan Hotel (RIP) did have a cake for me the next day.

I had been whisked not a but a day plus earlier from College Station, TX, with a prior culinary history of midwestern cream of something casserole (or jello salad something).

It was a revalation. Just ask my kids.

[tryska]

well i can give my first distinct independent foreign food adventure.

I was in college, and we went on a cultural anthropological tour of NYC - we visited temples and mosques and art galleries, and all sorts of stuff. Since it was all college kids - there was a large faction of "Harlem? we can't go to Harlem! why do we have ot go there? Why can't we just do American stuff?" this faction chose to get pizza when we hit Soho for lunch and were tasked with assignement of eating something we'd never had before.

The other faction - us adventurous types, chose to hit this hole in the wall pho shop (didn't realize that's what it was called then - it was jsut Vietnamese to me). Technically we sort of cheated too, because the leader on that assignmnet had actually had Vietnamese before, and thought it was pretty good - I found it to be a revelation and to this day one of the best lunches i've ever had.

College was great for that kind of thing tho. I remember the first week of orientation one of the Jewish guys in my class had his first bacon cheeseburger washed down with milk to a whole lot of pomp and circumstance and cheering.

[jayt90]

It's funny how remembering one outrageous restaurant meal leads to another, and another, but I'll stick to the first two here:

both are in the 70's

A small group of students went to a new Thai place in lower Manhattan. I ordered a simple dish of ground beef with vegetables. Pretty tame, I thought. But what are these tiny green chili's like? I took a large mouthful, and discovered that they were extremely hot. I gasped for water, but it did not stop the heat. I began to hiccup, uncontrollably, and I was embarassed that the whole restaurant might be looking at me, and my table. After a couple of minutes, my stomach settled down, and I nibbled at something tamer than the ground beef...

Two years later, I was in a Chinese restaurant and feeling adventurous, ordered "Hand of Duck". What came was duck feet. I tried to eat them, and they even had a good duck taste, but I soon put them aside, and chalked up another misadventure based on poor communication, or misunderstanding in a restaurant.

[racheld]

Those of you who grew up in cities or towns or at least NEAR somewhere which served something besides barbecue, hamburgers and chicken fried steak will probably not understand, but my first taste of Chinese food was when I was maybe ten years old. And it WAS Takeout, of a very special sort.

Scene was the prototype of a sleepy, dusty, Delta day; time was noon dinner. My Mom cooked a big hearty dinner every morning, Daddy walked home from work just a couple of blocks away, and stoked up on peas and cornbread and fried chicken and enough banana pudding and peach cobbler to serve the multitudes.

I doubt that we had anything more in our spice cupboards than salt, pepper and cinnamon. Food was baked, stewed or fried. Or jelled.

Daddy had said he was bringing us a surprise for lunch, so we set the table and awaited his arrival. I walked out back to look down the long green alley separating our row of houses from the ones on the other side of the block, and beheld my Dad, walking along under the shade, with his hands out in front of him on each side. I ran to meet him, and saw that he was bearing two "boilers" like the ones we cooked snap beans and other vegetables in. I know it had been a hard thing to carry those two heavy pots upright by the stickout handles, as they were steaming hot and really heavy.

We made our way to the kitchen, where he whisked off the lids to uncover almost a potful of tiny, gleaming, almost translucent rice grains, perfectly cooked and tender. They were nothing like our usual Mahatma rice, which my Mom swore by until she discovered the magical Uncle Ben's. This rice was sticky and soft and perfect, holding together in little clumps on the fork, and picking up a lovely sheen of the sauce poured upon it rather than drowning in it.

The other pot lid revealed the mystery: A grayish, greenish mass of slices and slivers and long strands of strange vegetables enclosed in a gluey substance. Mother's usual skepticism arose. She sniffed once, not at the food, but in disdain, then headed for the refrigerator for leftovers.

I leaned into the vapors drifting from the pot and was imprinted for life. The aromas of garlic and greens and a hint of oil and the merest undertone of licorice were all there. They drew me in, those shreds of bamboo and bean sprouts, strands of thinnest-cut celery and wisps of onion, all velveted into the most luscious-smelling sauce I had ever encountered.

My Mother was persuaded to sit down, and we all helped our plates. He showed us to make a mound of rice, spread it a bit as the cook had showed him, and cover the top with the (a word first for me, but forever imprinted): CHOP SUEY. The first taste was amazing, salty and rich and garlicky and with all the flavours of the stir-fried vegetables. We always started stews and beans and other amalgams with a frying of some onion and bell pepper, but this stir-fry was quite different. I don't think I had ever tasted even sauteed celery before, and the bamboo shoots and bean sprouts were as exotic to me as if they'd come from Madagascar that very hour.

Daddy had become friends with the Chinese family who owned one of the tiny grocery stores on the street where he worked, and had smelled the cooking coming from their quarters behind the store. He had asked them to make him a pot of it for us to try, and they had it ready when he got off work at noon.

The store was a smelly little place, with a few cans of vegetables, some smoked meats and maybe a dozen loaves of Wonder Bread on the shelves, some chips and a Coke case and maybe turnips and potatoes and onions in a couple of halved wooden barrels. She could have used the parings and the leftovers and the discards from the vegetable bins, for all I knew, (and I think today, that in those times and their level of subsistence, perhaps she did).

But her cooking skills transmuted a handful of green bits into a wonderful, delicious amalgam of flavors that still sets the standard in my mind for all Chinese cuisine. I still seek out restaurants which cook what I think of as "brown" food---the salty sauces and the grayish mixtures which are seasoned with garlic and onion and soy, rather than all of the sugary/peppery/sesame sauces so prevalent in all those "buffet" places.

We are fortunate to have a very special Chinese restaurant here in town which cooks just that way---the Chop Suey is called Chow Mein, but I snug a spoonful into the center of my plate, ring it with small servings of Moo Goo and sauteed long beans and a bit of the onion and pepper from the Pepper Steak pan, scoop a little of that sticky rice into my small bowl, pick up my chopsticks, and I'm home. Home to that hot, dusty Mississippi noon when I tasted and found my cuisine in two battered, borrowed pots.

[Genny]

What a wonderful story Racheld, thanks for sharing that. It obviously has great weight in your childhood memories.

So many of my memories are food related, it is almost like the thread that holds chronology together for me.

A couple of my major food first memories:

When I was about 12 (early 80's) we went to Disneyland and had dinner at a place called The Orange or something. I ordered beef stroganoff and thought I went to heaven with the creamy mushroomy sauce, bites of beef, perfect pasta and sour cream. MMMMMMMM

Food didn't get much more exotic than that until college (late 80's - early 90's). A friend introduced me to Japanese food in down town San Jose, CA: Japan Town. I didn't like fish at all at the time but was a sport and tried the tuna roll. Not bad. I fell in love with sticky rice and miso soup though. Miso soup became a comfort food, one which I crave when I don't feel well. And I have come to love sushi/sashimi and am quite adventurous at the sushi bar!

About 4 years ago a friend from work was talking about this soup she had had and was dying to go back. Four of us went and I had pho for the first time. My very first Vietnamese food. Wow. I was tapping my toes the whole meal and couldn't believe my good fortune!

[Luckylies]

I almost vivdly remember the first time i had Sushi. It was at a joint that is now a mexican spot. The year was 1986 (making me 4) and my mother, twin sister and I went to this place for lunch. I don't especially remember anything other thant the fact that the staff at the restaurnt were extrordinarily friendly. We all munched through california rolls and tuna and things like that. all was well until I choled on some nori and puked my way fromt he table to the bathroom...quite humiliating, even to a youngster. To this day and much to my own chagrin and embarrasment, I find myself peeling off the nori perhaps I will learn to chew...

[tryska]

*lol* luckylies - that remidns me of the first time i had sushi- or rather sahimi - i had a boss who was a recent Chicago transplant and he and i had a very casual relationship. He had gone to a sushi place and brought back leftovers - he said "you've never eaten sashimi? it's jsut raw fish!" I said i don't eat raw flesh in any form - he says "c'mon - jsut strap some balls on, and try it!"

well with that appeal to my ego, how could i not? I must admit - i'm still a maki girl - but it's okay if the contents of my maki are raw.

[Country Cook]

My first sushi and sashimi was in a Japanese restaurant in the Old Strathcona area of Edmonton. It was early evening in the summer of 1999 and I decided to try something new so I walked into the resto and ordered some kind of sashimi/sushi combo plate. I loved the wasabi and was aware of it's potency but I didn't know what the pink pickled ginger was on my plate. Thinking the pickled ginger was some sore of sashimi I put the whole thing in my mouth. Good thing the restaurant was empty having just opened because I rather inelegantly spit it out (with no witnesses). I have leaned alot since then.