That magic mouthful: a taste I will never forget

[judiu]

The first asparagus, when I was probably 2 or 3. The first avocado at about the same age, as guacamole. I knew then I always wanted to eat like that!

[MissAmy]

I would have to say it was my first taste of sushi.  I was 19 when a friend took me to a Japanese restaurant in the city.  From the first bite I was hooked.  It’s been a 24 year ongoing love affair.

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Oh you made me remember the first time I ate sushi! I was around nine or ten, and my (now ex) stepdad coerced my mother and I into joining him for sushi. It was some random joint in Dallas, I don't remember the name, but I remember that first bite of maguro! What a revelation! It certainly wasn't the best sushi in the world, or the best sushi that I have ever had, but the memory is just such a delight! And as a kid from Lubbock, TX, I felt SOOOO subversive eating it!

It is now that I realize sushi is a lot like a highly addictive drug: you remember your first "high" so fondly that you are constantly searching it out again and again, but nothing ever compares to that first time!

[carpetbagger, esq.]

chicken wing pizza from lorenzo's (now closed) and san remo's pizza in liverpool and north syracuse, ny.

i'm so bad about this pizza that i pick up one on the way from the airport to my parent's house and again on the way back to the airport, before i head back to nashville (this time with ziploc bags so i can bring it home).

[Bill Miller]

Oysters on the half shell with red sauce--saltines to keep the little devils from squirting out from between your molars, and so fresh that you hear them say eek, eek as you bite down. My wife says my eyes glaze over as I eat them. I can eat dozens--the first with a crisp cold dry martini and then with a NZ sauvignon blanc.

[CKatCook]

Theres a resturant in Tacoma Washington where I grew up called The Great Wall, and the shrimp fried rice there was to die for. It was always a special treat when my grandfather took me there. And then we would go this hole in the wall ice cream shop and I would get blackberrie milkshake. I can still taste them if I dream enough.

Edited June 9, 2006 by CKatCook (log)

[BarbaraY]

Thai coconut soup! Thanks to bad press (It's got stinky fish sauce!) I had never had any Southeast Asian food until a friend took me to lunch at Siam Cuisine in Berkley CA. I was hooked instantly.

[sazji]

Alaskan king crab legs. There was a restaurant in Iowa City, where I grew up, called the Robin Hood Room, and maybe twice a year we'd go there for a "nice" dinner out. (We ate out very infrequently.) Only once did I get anything other than the crab legs, it was veal parmeggiana, and it was good, but it was a bit like having sex and thinking about someone else.... I was never unfaithful again!

Also the first bite of good chocolate pudding...

[misgabi]

First ever bite of duck prepared by a french restaurant. Crisp skin and melt in the mouth flesh. Finally understood the word unctuous.

[SuzySushi]

My first wild strawberries, when I was 22, in Rome, Italy.

Absolutely ambrosia.

[Idlewild]

Hmm. The first food that I really connected with on a pure pleasure level was spaghetti and meatballs with good homemade tomato sauce. To give context, I was a very very picky eater who was living on peanut butter sandwiches and tinned ravioli, with carrot sticks as my sole concession to vegetables. I was pre-school or kindergarten age. But on spaghetti and meatballs nights I would eat a bigger serving than anyone else in the family. So savory and delicious. My parents are both more or less anglo-mutt in origin but Dad grew up in a neighbourhood full of Italians, Greeks and Lebanese. Mum's food repertoire was well made but stodgy stuff like tuna mornay and sundry appalling anglo-indian curries (protein in white sauce with curry powder and sultanas.) Spaghetti and meatballs may have been the first explosion of garlic and onions and tomatoes (which I thought I hated -both onions and tomatoes) and herbs in my food experience.

I got less picky but I still love simple red-sauce Italian cooking.

Later taste explosions were myriad, like when a lovely Malaysian man came to visit our house and taught Mum some gorgeous Malaysian curries. Oh my god. First bite of a pile of cauliflower and potato and meat, gorgeous. And when some genuine Americans came to live nearby and brought the joy of FRESH salsa, as opposed to the bland stuff in jars, and real home-made tortillas, and omg... guacamole... omg... without sour cream or other white filler.

First taste of Thai food heavy on the fish sauce when I was at Uni - and thought I hated it but then craved it for weeks afterwards. Mmm.

The upside of growing up with relatively bland regional cuisine is there are so many fantastic moments of discovery.

[Jacqui Ingledew]

My seventh birthday. I recieved Beowulf, Lambs tales from Shakespeare,and Hiawatha as presents (I was more than thrilled being a bit of a bookworm) and my parents decided to take us into the city to see The Student Prince and then to have a late lunch. I can still recall the taste of the oysters with the drops of pepper sauce , and the octopus soup which followed. One of my happiest memories

[CMA]

Dinner with my parents at the Four Seasons in Manhattan when I had the Long Island roast duckling for the first time in 1999. After the waiter carved it tableside, he paused to observe my reaction. It was somewhat like a gastronomic orgasm, and I must have demonstrated my non-verbal enjoyment rather clearly because he spontaneously and candidly commented..."you really like that don't you?" And my answer was simply, "Oh, yes!". An especially memorable initial mouthful at an important and very enjoyable meal with my parents.

Edited June 13, 2006 by CMA (log)

[CMA]

Having a slice of the Sacher Torte and coffee in the Sacher Hotel dining room in Vienna, Austria in 2002 was truly sublime. We did not actually stay at the Sacher hotel as guests, but a visit to their hotel dining room for a sample of the torte and coffee was a must. I can say I have had no better chocolate-based cake and coffee in one sitting at any time in my life. It truly was the epitome of delicious. Very highly recommended.

[CMA]

Having a plate of garlic shrimp at a street-side table in 2003 next to a shack-type seafood restaurant with the menu painted in red (in English and Chinese) on the outter walls of it in Hong Kong, China. The restaurant is on a street corner right next to the Night Market with basic, white plastic-type patio chairs and tables. The food was incredibly delicious along with the Chinese beer...the name of the beer currently escapes me, but it is common in Hong Kong. Very highly recommended.

Edited June 13, 2006 by CMA (log)

[andrewB]

the best dish i have ever tasted was outside of Milan at Antica hostera del ponte(sp?) as was a soft poached egg on brioche with a passed foie gras and port sauce with shaved white truffles. it was the sexiest dish i have ever had and pairing it with an '83 d'Yquem was truely wonderful...

[evongvisith]

The last time I was in Bangkok, about ten years ago, my dad dragged us to this tiny place across the road from the train station, where at sunrise, still jet-lagged and groggy, we had breakfast. The setting was far from picturesque; it was a shabby wooden shack right by the street, with cars and buses roaring past only a few feet from the three or four tables, which were all haphazardly rickety (I was sitting on an upended plastic crate). The cooking was done over a single gas burner with a large pot holding the rice porridge, to which you could add any number of ingredients. I had ground pork, fresh basil leaves, and dried chiles in mine.

It was indescribably good -- salty and somehow rich, hot (temperature-wise) enough to make the heavy, muggy air feel cool by comparison, and with enough spiciness to wake me up right away. I forgot that I was tired and grouchy and ate every last spoonful and grain of rice, totally ignoring the dogs sniffing around the tables, the smell of diesel, and the noise of the trains. I don't think I'll ever forget the taste of it, though I'm not sure why it had such a lasting effect on me (I was in my mid-twenties then and had eaten Thai food many times both there and at home.)

Unfortunately, Dad went back a couple of years later for another family visit and called me one night (it was morning over there) only to report the horrible news that the shack was gone without a trace! So his hopes of ever having another bowl of that stuff were dashed

[kitchencat]

My mother's spareribs! I haven't eaten them in about 45 years (and I don't remember her making them after my early teen years), but I'll always remember their flavour. I've never made spareribs myself, and don't think I've sampled too many in my life since the 1950-60s (I don't know why), but it's the first food that came to mind on reading through this thread. Of course, it was mainly the barbecue sauce she made that tasted so wonderful, but the meat itself was perfectly prepared for my taste and texture-preferences.

My mother was a fabulous everyday cook. Another incomparable comfort food she made was spaghetti and meatballs. What a great sauce! It made this traditional fare superb and left me thinking for years that spaghetti and meatballs was a difficult dish to prepare. She put so much time into it. I guess a really good sauce was a specialty of hers. As with the spareribs, she hasn't made spaghetti and meatballs since about the same time. I should ask her why. She probably doesn't have the recipe anymore....

[Kikyo]

1. My uncle's barbecue chicken and garlic bread. He uses some secret rub on the chicken that gives fantastic flavor and each piece is always charred on the outside and mega-juicy and tender on the inside. As for the garlic bread, he injects a loaf of french bread with garlic butter through the entire center of the loaf and then grills it and the butter slowly melts and infuses the bread. So good. He was my aunt's third husband and I guess he really knew he was part of the family when I forced him to cook this for everyone at my high school graduation party.

2. The branzino at Angelini Osteria in L.A. It's cooked in a sea salt crust and then plated for you tableside with a buttery lemon sauce that is lovely. I took my husband here for his birthday the first year we were together. It was the first time I had been out with a "date" to a real gourmet restaurant since high school and the experience of great food, great atmosphere and service and great company really turned me into a foodie. I felt so special as they freed my fish from its salty cage for me right there at the table and carefully separated it from the bone, bit by bit. I have never again had a fish that tasted that good.

[Foie Gras & Truffles]

Not quite a childhood food, but...

The food I most vividly remember, and can still taste on the tip of my tongue, would be Filet Rossini from the former Main Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton Boston. Filet mignon perfectly roasted, a thick slice of sauteed foie gras on top, all topped with a wonderful port / veal jus reduction...heaven!

[Alchemist]

Moms qusadillas.

Corn tortillas, thrown briefly on open flame, then layered with grated mild cheddar and peppar jack, and another tortilla, also a little chard. Then a bunch of Herdez salsa. We brought cases up from Mexico to Colorado. I would love one of thoes but it's impossible to get good corn tortillas in NYC.

[H. du Bois]

This is going to sound utterly pathetic, but it was butter (the gross stuff we grew up calling "butter" was actually margarine - or worse yet, imitation margarine).

My grandmother had brought back salted butter from Canada that was hand-churned and sold at a farmstand. She spread it on a piece of real bread - warm, crusty French bread, and my first taste of the real thing (spread upon the real thing, too) was sublime.

[Lady T]

A lot of Saturday nights in the deep cold Chicago winters of the 60's and early 70's, we had baked potatoes and meatloaf and creamed corn. My memory is probably too rosy in retrospect, but those three mingled smells and flavors (my entire allotment of creamed corn ended up in my potato, after a generous pat of butter and with a proper muchness of salt and pepper on top) spell safety, and home, and peace. No idea why.

I still make meatloaf to my late mom's recipe. And when I bake potatoes, I still bake 'em slowly for and hour and a half at 350 degrees, rather than the faster/higher temps other folks might use. They come out just a touch sweeter and crisper in the skin, to my taste.

My first taste of foie gras was in the kitchen of the Wrigley Building Restaurant that was -- just a generous gob, schmeared out onto righteous fresh bread. I damn near fainted, and that was before I knew what a good Sauternes could do.

There's more, but that's what comes to mind.

[Lilija]

When I lived on Guam, we attended fiestas and block parties, regularly. There was never a week, that some huge party wasn't going on. It was just what we did, on weekends.

I would always load my plate up with red rice, and kelaguen, and some slices of the pig. At almost all of these parties, they pit roasted a whole pig. The bigger the party, the bigger the pig! We partook of a 200lb pig, once, for a wedding. It was AMAZING.

My bite, though is a plastic forkful of smoky red rice, topped with a sliver of the meaty , crackly crisp fatty juicy pig, dragged through the local sauce, finadine, with a bit of onion or jalepeno, from the finadine. All shoveled into my mouth, standing under a tent, late at night, local reggae band thumping. I can smell it, taste it, and feel it, right now.

[patti]

When I was a child, our family of six used to go to 6:00 a.m. Mass a couple of times a week during Lent. Often we'd go out to breakfast afterwards, to a little place called Courthouse Cafe. Sometimes Daddy would only allow us to order a small breakfast of biscuits and jam with juice, other times, we could have a full breakfast. What I remember most fondly, other than the six of us sitting together at the restaurant, was the richness of the thick chocolate milk, the grits, slow-cooked, buttery, and sublime. A bite of grits, a bite of toast, chased with that delicious chocolate milk ... mmmmm. You'd think I'd be waxing nostalgic about the eggs and crispy bacon. Oh, those were good, too. But the other three tastes, those are the ones I remember best.

Another food memory is my first taste of raw oysters. Daddy brought home a sackful, and we all sat in the garage as he shucked them. We each waited our turn, one by one. I was a little nervous about it at first, so Daddy gave me a little sleeve of saltines. A fat, fresh oyster, a saltine, and a dash of Tabasco. Great stuff!

[Cook456]

Eating a fresh fig for the first time.